


A Better Birthright

by suddenlyGoats



Series: Transcendence Fics [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Reincarnation, Transcendence AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-07-14 01:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7146941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suddenlyGoats/pseuds/suddenlyGoats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Centuries after the collapse of civilization a solitary Mizar summons Alcor for assistance in her rise to power.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Aw, there’s no need to be so upset, doll. They were bad men, and I’ll protect you. You don’t have to worry about me, none of this was your fault. You’re just a child, it isn’t like they gave you a choice in worshiping those twisted idols. There’s no reason for you to share the fate of those who forced you into that path. Take my hand and we can move on to a better future, alright? A safer future._

_Are you really going to abandon your family and community over some twisted sense of duty? I thought you were better than that. You’re just a pawn to them, you know. Just a tool to further their twisted agendas. But if you really want to leave I won't stop you._

_You’ll see how little those precious spirits of yours will help you in the wastes._

_You’ll be back._

 

The meager light of the candles was obscured as smoke filled the dark area. Pinpricks of golden light broke through it like stars through wispy clouds, suggesting a bipedal form with their constellations. A thick scent permeated the air, fragrant greenery weighing down her lungs and the metallic tang of blood hitting her tongue. A wide opening full of gleaming white teeth cut through the darkness, the only bright thing in the desiccated room. She took a step forward towards the circle.

“Well now, this is certainly i͏n̢͞te͝r̸̶ę̡͝s̸̢t҉iǹ͠g̷. It’s been a very long time since anyone's actually summoned me with a proper ritual,” the figure in the circle said. “And such a… traditional location for it. To what do I owe the honor?”

“Demon Alcor, I would like to make a deal with you,” she said, stepping forward and tightly clenching her fingers into fists.

Alcor looked down at the young woman tenaciously meeting his eyes. She was tall and built like a brick house, with a tangled web of scars and scratches covering the dark sepia skin of her arms and legs. Thick bangs covered her forehead, freed from the bindings of the loose braid that held back the rest of her greasy black hair. Her tattered shirt, which may once have been a wide array of light colors but was now a beige camo of miscellaneous stains, was covered in colorfully embroidered protective sigils. Next to her, within reach but outside of the candle’s illumination, was a large and carefully packed bag.  He could see waves of excitement and apprehension pouring off her, pulsing over the tightly held core of fear and anger. Her bright aura surrounded him like a blanket on a cold night, a familiar and comforting warmth, calling out to some primordial part of him.

“Oh?” he responded.

“I want you to help me take over the world.” She grinned widely, keeping her dark eyes locked onto his.

Alcor blinked.

“Yeah, alright.”

“Wow, really? That was WAY easier then I was expecting! Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but I had this whole speech planned out and junk.”

“Eh, it’s been a pretty slow couple of centuries. ‘Bout time someone came and stirred things up a little.” He stretched his arms and drifted out of the circle. “So, how exactly do you want to go about this? I give you control of the world -”

“No,” she injected. “I’m doing this the right way or not at all. None of that stupid hand-wavy crap. That’s just begging for something to get corrupted!”

“Alright then, what is it you actually want me to do then, Mizar?”

“Mizar?”

He blinked again. “Right. You wouldn’t… um. Sorry about that. What is your name by the way?”

“No no, that’s actually perfect. Mizar. I think I like it. I think I like it a lot! New life, new name. Mizar. Mizar the Empress. Yeah!”

“That might get confusing,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Who cares? Anyway. Anyway!” She punched her palm. “What I want. I want you to come with me. I want your endorsement to those who can be swayed by words, and your magic for those who will be swayed by force. I want your knowledge to help combat the corruption. I want to take this world by storm, to unite the scattered communities, to restore what was lost in the calamity. And I want to do it with you.”

“Well that certainly sounds entertaining. You definitely have my interest. What would I get in exchange for helping you with this?”

“A dedicated following of everyone in the areas I control. Regular sacrifices and a large influence in the eventual system of governance.”

“So you want to start a religion.”

“That’s the jist of it. You give me, and eventually us, protection and advice, and in exchange you get general devotion. Seems pretty fair to me!”

“I never did like other demons… maybe it is about time I stopped tolerating the competition. You got yourself a deal, kid.”

He reached a jet black hand down to her. She grinned broadly, baring her crooked teeth at the demon, and grabbed his smooth hand into a crushing embrace. A cool blue flame erupted around their united hands, and Mizar felt a hauntingly familiar surge of energy briefly pulse through her.  
  


Mizar walked purposefully through the ruined bunker, breaching the thick darkness with an old flashlight with a lopsided crystal awkwardly taped to it. It looked like nothing had originally been in the hallway, which was once presumably empty with smooth white tiles. Currently the cracked, faded tiles were peppered with debris from the fallen ceiling, broken wall, and the leavings of various small animals and other miscellaneous organic matter. It was largely navigable, but occasionally Mizar would have to give Alcor her flashlight to help her climb over a pile of debris.

“How did you find my circle, anyway? I haven’t seen anyone use it in centuries.,” the black figure asked, drifting behind Mizar in the air.

She kicked a piece of charred door out of her path, watching it splinter from the force.

“I’ve been taking whatever old books on magic I can get from ruins since I started stormwalking,” she replied, striding past the peeling grey wallpaper of the ruined corridor. “Information is pretty scattered, but this bunker thing I found is amazing! There’s a whole library that's largely preserved! It looks like the really cool stuff is deeper, but the structural damage around the stairs is completely impassable, so I’m stuck on this floor. There were a bunch of rad skeletons though, so it wasn’t a total waste.”

“If the stairs are out of operation, how did you get down here?”

“Well, I noticed that the corrupted avoided the weird abandoned town above here, right? So I investigated the area, trying to find what might be deterring them. Something that would repel the corrupted would be a pretty big deal, after all. Also I really didn’t have anything else to do while waiting for the swarm that had been chasing me to move on. Anyway! I was looking around, testing localized mana levels and junk, when the ground caved in and I fell through the roof. Guess no one has tromped around up there in a long time, huh?”

Mizar looked into an empty doorway. Rows of tables interspersed with sinks were in various states of decay. The far half of the room was largely caved in, and the furniture near it was heavily charred. Shelves full of amber jars line the walls.

“So… you’re stuck here, is what you’re saying?”

“Yep!” She laughed loudly. “So far at least. There’s probably another way out somewhere. This place is huge!”

“Are you looking for a way out? Cause the central stairs were the only way to the surface.”

“Nah, I got better things to do than leave right now. I still know where my hole is, anyway. Worst case I can climb up some stuff. When I was poking around earlier I think I saw some old junk that could be useful.” She walked through a broken wall and looked around. “Oh man jackpot! Do you think that any of this is still edible?”

Her flashlight illuminated a large vending machine laying on its side. Ancient coins spilled out from a long tear in the rusted metal.

“Edible is a relative term.”

“Damn straight. The question was pretty rhetorical though, no way am I passing up the mystery ancestral banquet!” Standing to its side she detached a short staff from her large backpack and smashed the thin glass of the decrepit machine. “You’re super old, right? Anything here you would recommend?”

“The stripey ones are largely honey. There’s a minute chance they survived the centuries enough that you won't instantly get food poison.”

“Those are the kinda odds I like to hear,” she said, scooping up a black and yellow hexagonal container. She dragged a wooden table to where the machine lay and perched on its metal side.

“There’s a tear tab in the corner.” Alcor mentioned, after watching Mizar futilely struggle to part the two halves of the plastic shell.

Mizar carefully took the seam out of her mouth and glared at him. She slowly set the snack on the table, and without taking her eyes off of his, she detached a large blade from its hilt on her thick leather skirt and stabbed the container, embedding the knife into the old wooden table. Honey oozed out of the hole, seeping down the blade into the crack in the table.

“Or you could do that. Never let it be said that you can’t solve your problems by stabbing them.”

“What can I say? Sometimes the reassuring, constant presence of knives is the only thing that keeps a person sane in this ever-changing, chaotic world.” She grabbed the leaking container and licked the stab wound.

She stared at the hexagon in her hands. “Oh. My stars. This is the sweetest thing I’ve ever had? It’s kind of disgusting? I want more? Was everything this gross before the calamity? I’ve read that people tended to have sweeter things, but this is a bit much, isn’t it?”

“You’re not really suppose to just eat the honey. There was a separate pocket with like, cookies or something. It would have been really obvious if you had actually opened it.”

“Eh, it’s better this way. Tastes like victory! Whatever ‘cookies’ are is probably super boring.” She pulled her knife out of the table and stared at the sticky blade. “You want anything while we’re here?”

“I think knowing what these things are suppose to taste like would probably ruin what little appeal rotten vending machine fare ever had.”

She shrugged. “Your loss, then! I think it’s time to move on.”

“You know where we’re going?”

“Of course! We need to find something to clean my knife! Or possibly find those neat machines I saw earlier. But mostly to clean my knife.”

“Just the sort of well thought out plan I would expect from a future world leader.”

“Hey! Decisive action is important.” She rubbed the flat of her blade against the corner of the doorframe as she headed out. “As are clean knives. Clean knives are actually one of the most important parts of leadership.”

“I’ve always liked bats as weapons myself”

“Bats are pretty limited use, though.” She ducked under a flat light fixture dangling from the ceiling by fraying cords. “Knives have all sorts of application. Pretty hard to get a controlled amount of your own blood with a bat, for instance.”

“But bats have style.”

“Anything has style if you have enough adhesive. Oh hey! The things!” She stepped into a small, relatively intact room. Plastic bins full of something rotting lined the walls on shelves. The far wall was occupied by a long metal table with two bulky machines on it. “Once, back when I was a part of a wandering community, we stopped by a village that had one of these. My exponent showed me how to make it work… They’re really great!”

“That’s a sewing machine.”

“Yep! Like I said, I’m doing this the proper way. Gotta start with the basics.” She grinned widely at Alcor, pulling a glistening banner of shining golden fabric from a side pocket of her backpack. “It’s time to establish our brand.”


	2. Chapter 2

Nav looked over at their datemate. Plessy was standing rigidly, staring at the dusty, twilit horizon. Nav couldn’t see anything special among the long shadows of the sparsely growing weeds, but they knew quite well that what they could see was only a fraction of what was there.

They slowly walked in front of Plessy, who didn’t respond to their presence. The reptilian’s inner eyelids covered her dilated eyes.

“Plessy?” They slowly moved their hand towards her. “You see anything I should know about?”

As they gently set their hand on her shoulder, Plessy flinched. She looked at Nav with unfocused eyes, not seeming to recognize them at all.

They retracted their arm. “Hey. It’s okay. It’s just me. Only your Nav.”

Plessy relaxed, her lanky body resuming its customary slouch.

“We need to get out of here.” She said, her deep voice shaking slightly. “Something’s coming. Something big. Fast.”

“Do you think we’ve got enough time to pack up camp?” Nav asked, as they grabbed their travel pack from next to the smoldering fire.

“Be quick.”

“Alright,” Nav said, and quickly reached down and hoisted Plessy of the ground, holding her over their shoulder. “I’m packed.”

Plessy started laughing, a deep rich chortle, and rolled off their shoulder.  
“Seriously though.” she said, smiling, and walked over to the tent.

“Think it’s a storm? We might want to plan what to leave behind if the sled fails.” Nav said, pulling the tent stakes out of the ground.

“Doesn’t feel like a storm. Not sure what. Maybe corruption?” Plessy frowned, dragging their water tank to a large sled, riddled with rust and dents.

“Is the Holland community still around, do you think? Could be a good place to resupply if things go to shit.”

Plessy set down the box she was carrying and held still for a moment. “Sickness hit. Recovering. Little to give.”

“Well that’s great. Herders won't be anywhere in the area this time of year, the asshats to the East are isolationists… Stars above, are there any friendlies nearby?”

Plessy shrugged, pulling a strap under the sled.

The two of them finished tightening the straps around the sled. Nav crouched down in front of it and pressed a few buttons whose markings had long since worn away. Slowly, and with a disgruntled mechanical whirring, it lifted a few inches off the ground, its underside flashing with a pale blue light before going dark. Taking each other's hand, they walked into the wasteland, sled following behind them.

 

* * *

 

A few hours into the night they heard a long screech, filling the open flatlands. It was loud enough to seem omnipresent, covering the land, covering the two partners and any other thoughts they might have had. There was only the noise. It lasted an eternity. It passed after a few seconds. In its wake was an echoing silence, a noiseless roar in their ears.

They looked at one another for a long moment, palpable worry shared between them.

“So… You uh, reckon that’s the thing?” Nav said.

“Possibly.” Plessy scanned the horizon.

“Any more thoughts on what it might be or how we might avoid it?”

“Can’t see.” She pressed her black palms against her eyes. “I can’t - I’m not.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Nav took one of her hands and gently stroked her yellow fingertips. “Pushing yourself isn’t going to help.”

“It’s just… The sound’s big. It tearing and metal and anger. But…what I Saw earlier. Static. Static and coals from a smoldering wood.” Plessy squeezed Nav’s hand. “I don’t know what it means. Can’t see past the static.”

“It sounds like its a problem for later alright? Mx. Static McForestfire can hold their damn horses, we need to focus on what made that noise. I think I see some old buildings or something a ways East, they’ll be some cover at least if we can get get to them in time.”

“Right.”

They continued to walk, carefully scanning the moonlit horizon as they went. The wind was still, and the humid air felt heavy in their lungs. The occasional insect was the only other noise they could hear outside of the crunching of their boots on the dry ground and the tired humming of the sled that followed them.

The ground began to vibrate. Subtly at first, like a distant but intense storm, it quickly grew, and with it a thunderous crashing could be heard coming at them from the side.

They started to run, abandoning the sled to slowly meander behind them.

A sickly yellow light came into view. It was high above the ground and bobbed up and down drastically as it approached. The grating screech of old metal straining as it rubbed against itself filled the night.

It was a tower crane. At least, it used to be a crane. The metal girders of the tower had bent and twisted from their original positions, forming massive and awkward legs. Snapped beams reached forwards with jagged edges, slowly turning to point towards the running couple. Its joints were encrusted with massive infestations of small crystals which bulged out in colonies, extending thin filaments out like a fungus. The crane’s long arm swung wildly as it lurched forward, littering the ground with a rain of brittle crystals knocked out of place by its movement. At the arm’s end a huge hook hung from a thick cord, wildly flailing with the arm’s erratic movement. The jury-rigged legs were too short for the body and misaligned with each other, yet the sheer size of the construct meant it was quite fast regardless. Carried largely by its own momentum, it was gaining on them quickly, its body groaning and screeching in protest of its unnatural movement.

“Well that looks like it’s going to tear itself apart pretty soon.” Nav shouted over the onslaught of noise.

“Not soon enough,” Plessy replied, craning her long striped neck back over her shoulder.

“Well I have a small water bottle, a crossbow, a roll of tape, a handful of pretty rocks, two guns with no power sources, and a chisel. Surely the corruption will rue this day.”

Plessy snorted.

“I don’t suppose you happen to have anything vaguely useful on you?”

Plessy rummaged around in the pockets of her dark leather tunic, searching the interior. A few stray bolts. A ring made of a twisted nail. A lock of fur. She reached deeper until she felt the something cold and bumpy. She withdrew a fist sized crystal from her pocket, smoothly faceted on one half with sharp granular bumps crowding the other. She forcefully pushed her thumb into one of the ridges, smearing the white edges with her dark blood. She handed the stone over to Nav.

Nav cut their finger on the crystal as well, and drew a simple glyph on the smooth side with all the elegance one would expect of someone finger painting on a nonporous surface while running from a massive abomination of twisted metal and cursed magic. When the smear was to their satisfaction they stopped, turned around, and threw the stone as hard as they could away from where the construct was coming from. They then resumed their desperate flight.

When the crystal hit the ground, it shattered, sending a bright red flare into the air. At the flare's peak, it exploded like a firework, producing a loud cracking that echoed around the area.

The crane turned slightly, lumbering towards where the crystal exploded.

“Looks like it’s going for it. That will buy us what, five minutes?”

“Vaguely useful.”

“I’m certainly not complaining.”

The dark shapes of the buildings were fairly close now, reaching up and covering the starlit sky as pillars of void. They held the incomprehensible size of the past within them, too tall and too numerous to fulfill any conceivable purpose. Forests of metal and concrete, overtaken by the unavoidable invasion of time and nature.

The crane was also getting fairly close. The crystal had successfully distracted it, but it hadn’t lingered much, merely crashing through the site and then turning back towards them. The whole ground vibrated under its thunderous strides.

“Okay so I figure we get to the ruin and hopefully when it follows there will be enough debris to finish destroying it.”

Plessy was silent, staring at the ancient buildings with wide unfocused eyes. Nav tightened their grip on her hand.

They dashed into a narrow street between two of the giant towers.

Behind them was a thunderous crash as the flailing arm of the corruption slammed into the skyscrapers. Somehow, despite the deteriorated state of the crane, the arm made its way clear through the sides of the building, raining a shower of glass, crystal shards, and concrete down behind them. The crane’s yellow light shone above the buildings, impossibly high in the sky, a sickly blinking star.

Plessy yanked Nav’s arm, pulling them into a side street. As they shot forward, they saw someone else. In the dark of the ally they couldn’t see much besides that she was tall, broad, and grinning like mad.

“There’s a corruption!” Nav shouted, still running.

“Well I should hope so, I didn’t come here for the scenic view.”

Despite themself, Nav couldn’t help but stare.

The stranger stepped back towards the street, pulling something out from her side. Something much longer than could possibly have been held unnoticably on her person. It was clearly some sort of long weapon, a pole topped with a large star that had two pick-like protrusions coming off of its bottom. A smaller inverted star glowed with a soft, golden light beneath the head. The weapon gave off an incredible air of danger, although the instant sense of how unwieldy such a thing must be put into question who exactly it presented a danger to.

Plessy had stopped.

She was rigid.

She was fixated on something directly behind the strange woman, something Nav couldn’t see.

The woman widened her stance.

Nav touched Plessy’s shoulder. She could feel a strange sensation of pins and needles in her head just from the touch.

The corruption lumbered past the alley opening, its arm smashing into the corner building behind it, causing it to turn awkwardly.

Plessy scooped up her datemate, trying to ignore how her arms felt numb upon contact.

There was debris falling from the sky.

The woman was readying her weapon.

Nav’s legs burned.

The world was screaming in a symphony of breaking glass, scraping metal, and bits of wall colliding and breaking.

Small dots of color danced in edges of Nav’s vision.

They started to move forward again.

The woman charged the corruption’s base, her weapon moving much faster than logic said it should be able to.

They were moving forward.

Plessy’s tail curled around Navs back as they leaned into their hold.

Nav rounded a corner.

They didn’t stop.

Everything was so loud.

Something exploded behind them. The towers around them swayed from the force.

Nav was lying on the ground. One of their arms was around Plessy. She looked alive. She was cute. They couldn’t feel their arms. Their legs hurt. A soft ringing surrounded them. There were some lights that drifted around them. They were pretty. The world was very heavy. They were tired. This was probably shock. Sleep was probably a bad idea. The asphalt was much softer then they remembered asphalt normally being. Plessy was sitting up. That was good. Sitting up meant she was better than alive. There was some noise from far away. Plessy was looking at Nav. Her black eyes were beautiful. She looked worried about something. She was waving her hand around. She was so silly. The sound was closer now. Was that their name? Why would someone be calling out to her? Who could be? There was that woman but how would she know their name? Plessy looked really worried. Her mouth was moving. Was she the one saying Navs name? Why did it sound so distant?

Nav reached out to bop Plessy’s hand.

“Stop being so far away I can’t sleep.” They shouted.

“Nav!” Plessy held their hand tightly. “Can you understand me?”

“Of course I understand you, that’s why we’re dating.” Nav paused. “That and cause you’re cute. And really smart too.”

“Okay Nav, try to focus. How many fingers am I holding up?” Three of her yellow-tipped fingers were held in front of Nav’s face.

“Maybe I don’t understand you. Why would someone so great be dating me?” The murmured.

“Nav. Fingers.”

“You’re holding up three fingers. Why? Are you having counting problems? That isn’t a good thing.” Nav paused for a moment. “Oh you’re worried about me aren’t you?”

“Just a little”, Plessy smiled slightly, putting her hand down. “You came down pretty hard in that blast.”

“Oh that’s good. I was worried it was somethin important.”

“You are important.” She smiled a bit broader. “I don’t think I can keep talking this loud. Do you think you could manage signs?”

“You’re talking loudly?” Nav asked, confused.

//You’re shouting.\\\ Plessy carefully signed. //I think your hearing got damaged in the explosion. Humans can be pretty sensitive to things like that.\\\

“Do you think it’ll get better?” Nav said aloud.

//I don’t know. There isn’t any blood or anything but beyond that…\\\ She shrugged. //What happens will happen. Can you sit up for me?\\\ She asked.

“Not sure. I have arms now but they are made of tingles.”

//Do you want me to help you sit up?\\\

“If you want.”

She gently put one of her hands behind them and helped prop them up against a large hunk of rubble.

“Wow, my arms exist a lot actually. I think they need to stop.”

//Sorry about that. I wasn’t trying to project.\\\ Plessy said sheepishly, sliding the tip of her bright blue tail around her legs. //I think that thing I saw earlier was with that strange girl.\\\

“The big ol’ static fire?” Nav started bouncing their hand against the ground. “I didn’t smell any smoke.”

//It was in the spirit realm. You wouldn’t smell it no matter what.\\\

“Then how did you? You have magic eyes, not snout. Snoot.”

//My Sight is an extra sense. I primarily interprate and talk about it like a modification to my vision, but it is it’s own thing entirely.\\\

“You’re your own thing entirely.” Nav giggled.

//I think you should probably get some sleep. I don’t suppose the sled is likely to catch up any time soon. Are you okay with what you have or should I go back for it?\\\

“No!” Nav shouted.

//That’s fine, I can stay.\\\ Plessy slowly signed.

“No, not that no. Um. No to here. The thing. It shed. They’ll root.” Nav pushed themself up a bit more.

//I’m not quite sure I followed that.\\\

“The thing.” Nav furrowed their brow. “Dumb brain. Okay. Thing, big, with the light and the chasing us. It had the small things. The movey things. Magic movey things. Rocks. Crystals! Yeah. Okay, so crystals shed. Spread. They’ll root. Make more magic things. Stars above I’m tired.”

//That’s a good point. Ruins do tend to take to corruption pretty fast.\\\ She covered her eyes briefly with her palms. //It’s hard for me to See if their are unfavorable auras around through all this damn static. Think you’re up to walking?\\\

“Ehhhhh,” They grumbled. “Don’t wanna.”

//There is a reason I didn’t ask if you wanted to walk.\\\

“Ehhhhhhhhhhhh” They moaned. “Gimme a boost.” They took Plessy’s arm with their hand.

She pulled them up, and positioned their arm around her shoulder. Together they walked through the ruin, darkness softened by the first hint of dawn, although keeping some distance between themselves and the worst of the rubble. Pebbles, glass and crystal shards crunched underneath their feet. As they walk past the alley they had encountered the woman from, a voice called out.

“Hey! Y’all doin’ alright?”

Plessy went ridged, pulling herself up to her full seven feet of height, with Nav hanging off their arm, awkwardly still slung around her shoulder. Her eyes were wide and fixated on the woman.

The woman was crouched on the balls of her feet, sitting on her heels. She leaned slightly on her strange staff, whose golden accents shone with an eerie brightness. The growing light of the early morning started to illuminate her details. Her skin was dark, a gentle silhouette in the faint light. Her frizzy hair seemed to care little for gravity, catching the sun’s first beams in a halo around her head. Whatever she was wearing seemed to be fairly dark with lots of bright stripes at odd angles. She was grinning far too much for Plessy’s comfort.

“I thought about going to you earlier, but there seemed to be something of a moment.” She jumped onto her feet. “Good to see you’re on your feet though.”

“You’re haunted.” Plessy stated.

“What, you mean this guy?” She poked the air next to her with her staff. “He’s alright.”

She stared at the empty air that she had gestured at. “He says he’s sorry for overwhelming you. Apparently he hasn’t been around anyone with notable Sight in a while.”

Plessy looked at the disturbance. It, or he apparently, was hardly recognizable as the overwhelming force that had filled her senses earlier. The all consuming static had largely faded, leaving behind a mild buzzing and a strong and distinctive scent of a fire.

“Anyway, I’m Mizar. I’m going to cure the world.” Mizar slid her staff into something at her waist. “You should come with me!”

Plessy looked at the woman before her. At the spirit that could apparently drastically alter how his aura was perceived. Then at the dark and twisted shape of the corruption that she had taken down at an impossibly serendipitous time. And the half asleep person hanging off her side.

“We have to go.” She relaxed herself to the point that she could reasonably help Nav walk again.

“Would you mind if I came with you?” Mizar asked, “I might have, just slightly, overdone it with that guy.”

“This place is empty.”

“For the most part I guess. So?”

“How were you there?” Plessy was glaring into Mizar’s eyes.

“I am a pretty decent shaman. I was advised by the spirits on where to go.”

“Spirits.” Plessy said, looking at the utter lack of any other auras around.

“Well, spirit. Your flare helped too.” She drew her hand through her hair. “Honestly, I didn’t really know what I was getting into, just that there were people and a corruption. It was pretty surprising, having spent so long going through this old ass ruin and then suddenly having the big guy just fucking plow through. Pretty awesome surprise though!”

Plessy started walking out of the city.

“So is that a no?” Mizar called after her. “Maaaaaybe?”

“Don’t care.” Plessy said.

“I’m going to call that a begrudging yes. Which is great, cause I’m going to crash real hard pretty soon.” She said, and cheerfully followed Plessy walking towards the rising sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! Finally got the new chapter out. Sorry that took so long, but I'm not the fastest writer in the world and my job doesn't leave me too much time to write. I am now done trying to juggle writing with making a complicated cosplay, and I just got on a new med, so hopefully it will be a bit faster from here on out, but no promises.  
> Thanks to my friend [Invernom](http://www.invernom.tumblr.com) for betaing and thanks to my copyeditor, 1025 crows in a trench coat. This would not be legible without them.
> 
> Also I have a creative works tumblr now. I am happy to answer any random questions about what I've written. I'm at [beelieveinfandom.tumblr.com](http://www.beelieveinfandom.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got this chapter out! It was less edited then normal so there might be some mistakes. Warning for mildly graphic violence.

The bright noon sunlight illuminated everyone despite the best efforts of their old tent. Nav was still sleeping, releasing irregular snores every few minutes. Mizar was starting to stir, the colorful straps of her outfit shining brightly even in the dim light. Not that ‘outfit’ seemed like a particularly apt word for the minor amount of cloth that she had covering her person, which was mostly just strategically placed straps, covering just enough to let a viewer know that she had heard of modesty and decided that it wasn’t for her. There were also long flowing sleeves with beautiful designs that seemed to have no function outside of inevitably getting caught in things at inconvenient times, with a matching ‘skirt’ with slits that went the length of both sides. She had a flat enough chest that the lack of support wasn’t too much of an issue, but it still didn’t seem like there was any possible way the outfit could have any vague semblance of comfort. There was also no apparent method for keeping it in place, or on her body at all for that matter. There was, as far as Plessy was concerned, absolutely no reason for it to exist. It was dumb. This whole situation was dumb.

 

Mizar sat upright, yawning widely. Rubbing her eyes, she turned Plessy.

 

“So, we didn’t really interact much earlier. I’m Mizar, I’m starting a religion and am going to purge the world of corruption. What’s your name?”

 

“Plessy.”

 

“So do you two stick to this area generally or do you move around a bit more?” She asked, stretching her arms over her head.

 

“Depends.”

 

“Look,” Mizar put her arms down and looked at Plessy. “I know that you don’t exactly trust me-”

 

“Really?” Plessy glared. “Doesn’t really sound like it.”

 

Mizar was quiet for a moment, simply looking at Plessy. “Alright. I know I’m suspect as hell. And I sound like I want something. Mostly cause I do. I’m trying to get someplace pretty far off, and frankly I’m already a bit outside my comfort zone, and could use some company and help. I’m not going to make you do anything, but I would appreciate some company for as far as you would be willing to take me.”

 

“Where?”

 

“Apparently there’s a highly specialized magical library in the north-west that should still be pretty well preserved. It seems like a pretty good starting point for what I’m trying to do.”

 

“So you don’t know what you’re doing.”

 

“Of course I know what I'm doing, I'm going to purge the world of corruption! I already have a few theories about how I will do it too. But if I’m taking it from the top I would need to spend a hella long time developing my plan, and why build a new bridge when you can finish someone else's, right?”

 

“You’re deranged.”

 

“I’m also hungry. Would you be willing to help me make some breakfast or would you rather stay in here being all salty?”

 

Nav propped themself up. “I think I might take you up on that actually.”

 

Plessy perked. “Nav! You’re awake. Are you doing alright?”

 

“I think so, the pressure in my ears has gone down a lot, although there is still a pretty consistent ringing. My thoughts also feel much more coherent. Still kinda tired, but I guess that’s just what happens when you spend a day and a half awake and moving.” They said, rubbing their eyes.

 

“You certainly sound more coherent. Outside of the ringing, can you hear alright?”

 

“You’re pretty hard to make out, actually. Might be easiest for you to go back to signing.” Nav gestured to Mizar. “She’s fine though.”

 

“Well I’m glad someone appreciates my lack of volume control!” She said, standing up. “Now let’s go out and find some shit to burn!”

 

* * *

 

“So, Mizar was it?” Nav asked, cutting at the base of a dead shrub.

 

“Thats me.” Mizar said, kicking some large stones into a circle. “Do you want some help with that? My staff can function pretty well as a scythe. Don’t need to scratch up your arms or anything.”

 

“No, this is fine thanks. My balance has been off since last night and I think it’s probably good for me to do some simple tasks to try and adjust.” Nav said, carefully working the base of the scrub with a small handsaw. “I’m Nav, by the way. They/them.”

 

“She/her.” Mizar looked around. “What’s Plessy doing with your guys’ sled?”

 

“She’s checking for crystals. Some almost certainly took root last night, but if you chisel them off fairly quick they aren’t a problem.”  

 

“It’s amazing that you have something like that that still works after all this time.”

 

“It’s been with Plessy’s family since basically forever. Pretty much the only thing from them she still has, good riddance. It had a name from them when I was first traveling with her, but it was taken, which is probably for the best honestly. I think that it’s currently running more on all the various modificational enchantments then whatever was originally powering it. We give it a sacrifice every now and then and it works pretty well for us.” Their saw broke through the woody base of the bush. “Hah, got it!”

 

“Great, let’s get this started.”

 

Nav dumped the bush in the circle of rocks. “You want to break this down or should I do it?”

 

Mizar looked down at it. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

 

She reached deeply into one of the small pouches at her belt. After a few seconds, she pulled out a piece of paper. A detailed mess of lines covered its surface. She set it down under the bush and tore it in half, quickly withdrawing her hand as bright flames overtook the paper and started to lick the bush.

 

“So how do those pouches work anyway?” Nav asked curiously. “You had like half your forearm in there.”

 

“Oh man, they’re fantastic!” Mizar grinned. “The magic behind them is complicated, but they’re basically just portals to a room somewhere. It has enough space to hold all the shit I need and it doesn’t weight anything. I would highly recommend getting spirits to give you cool shit.”

 

“I didn’t realize spirits worked so directly.” Nav poked at the small fire with a stick. “I mostly hear of them as being more for luck and such.”

 

“Yeah, that’s what I grew up with,” Mizar said, frowning slightly. “Respect and offerings to get favors.” She perked up again. “Frankly it’s dumb. It’s so much more efficient to deal with the spirits directly.”

 

“Then why don’t people normally?”

 

“Most people don’t even know that’s an option.” She spread her arms widely. “As a whole, we don’t actually understand spirits very well. Direct interactons takes a fairly specific ritual, which I only know cause I found a bunch of ancient books that happened to be preserved very well. There’s also the fact that most spirits either are not especially powerful or will wreck your shit when given the opportunity. You need the right one, and since we lost most of our information with the calamity you probably won't find them.”

 

“So was the presence that was overwhelming Plessy yesterday the spirit that you’re working with then?” Nav sat down, crossing their legs.

 

“Oh yeah! Look at me being all rude. This,” She gestured grandly at the empty space next to her, “is Alcor of the Guiding Light. We’re going to start a major religion together. He’s pretty cool!”

 

Plessy walked over holding a pot. She placed it over the fire, supported on the rocks, and sat down next to Nav.

 

Mizar was struck by the extraordinary physical contrast between the two. Nav was slightly short and fairly stout, with light brown skin and a wild mane of straight black hair, whereas Plessy was inhumanly lanky, with a long, thin neck and torso and almost humorously short limbs. Her pitch black scales were broken up with five yellow stripes that ran from her head down her back, somewhere along the way changing into a striking blue that met at the end of her tail. From what little Mizar had seen of them, they were almost always touching. Currently, Plessy’s tale was wrapped around Nav’s back.

 

“So now that you’re both here, how would you feel about me traveling with you for a while? I got my own supplies and am pretty fucking awesome in a fight.”

 

Plessy turned to Nav. //I’m sure you’re going to be shocked by this revelation, but I don’t trust her at all.\\\ she signed.

 

//Well she definitely is pretty competent in a fight, that construct had a fair bit left in it when she showed up.\\\

 

 ***So, do you want me to translate this or…*** Alcor said, floating on his back between mizar and the fire.

 

“What? No. Don’t be rude.” Mizar whispered back.

 

//The whole scenario stuck me as improbably convenient, as if it were staged.\\\ Plessy’s hands moved in quick, constricted signs. //Simply accepting that she, someone who happened to be able to take out a corruption of such magnitude, just happened to be there, right as it was catching up to us, right as we got to a place that could potentially shelter us…\\\ She shook her head, //to say that I’m skeptical of the authenticity of the whole thing is the understatement of the year.\\\

 

//Honestly her organizing all that would significantly more impressive by my book.\\\ Nav signed, hands moving in sweeping arcs. //For her to find a way to steer a corruption towards us while getting to the city significantly before us, and still taking it down somehow? Fuck I’d go with her just to learn her secrets.\\\

 

//I’ll concede that her orchestrating the entire night’s events is a little far fetched,\\\ she signed, eyes narrowing, //however I still very much feel like she is trying to manipulate us into something much larger than a simple escort.\\\

 

They shrugged. //Orchestration or not, last night was very close. I haven’t seen a corruption of that scale in years. It seems unlikely that it would form in complete isolation. I think the area might be undergoing a manifestation, and honestly I don’t think I would be able to weather a storm right now. It might be a good idea to go with her, at least while my hearing and balance are still messed up.\\\

 

//I suppose that worst case we can presumably just leave.\\\ Plessy sighed. //It seems unlikely that she would ask us to come along if she were planning on making us. Or, for that matter, if she is planning on making us I'm starting to get the distinct impression that there wouldn't be too much we could do about it.\\\

 

//I don’t reckon it will be that bad. She seems nice enough.\\\

 

//The spirit that follows her makes me nervous. While we were in the city he appeared incredibly powerful. More powerful than I previously thought was possible in fact. And he currently looks well within the boundaries I am familiar with, which would mean that  he can make himself seem much less powerful than he is.\\\ She frowned. //I have never heard of a spirit being able to do such a thing. I cannot even be confident that what I witnessed at the ruin was even his limit.\\\

 

//She seems confident in him.\\\ Nav pointed out.

 

//She seems awfully confident in everything. She seems awfully confident that she can somehow “cure the world”.\\\ Plessy hands moved in quick jagged motions. //She seems awfully confident that I’m just going to magically start liking her. She seems awfully confident that everything will go her way, that the moon and stars will come when she beacons. Her confidence appears to be a simple fact of her existence, not any sort of reasonable indicator of the actual reality of the situation.\\\ She paused, putting her palms together and taking a breath. //Spirits are incredibly fickle and unpredictable, and generally these traits become more prominent as they get more powerful.\\\

 

//But spirits are also even more affected by storms then people. Might the spirit also be interested in stopping corruption? Having a common goal with a powerful spirit would be a pretty logical reason to think you can handle whatever is thrown at you.\\\

 

//That,\\\ Plessy conceded, //would make a fair amount of sense. Still, to put so much trust in such a being is reckless at best. Regardless of the foolishness of her behavior though, if she is specifically interested in us for some ominous purpose and not just the prospect of having company as she claims, there isn’t terribly much we could do about it. And I suppose it isn’t like I’m being stuck down by visions of our horrific deaths, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the spirit was obscuring that aspect of my sight. I just don’t like this.\\\

 

//You’re getting a little rambly again,\\\ Nav signed. //Also we should probably give her a response soon, I feel a bit awkward just signing in front of someone.\\\

 

//Considering that she has been having a rather lively conversation with the spirit next to her since we started I rather doubt she minds.\\\ Plessy stretched her long neck upward and continued, “to the matter at hand; I guess the thought that I’ve been meandering around is that you do indeed have a fairly good point. The chance of significant hostile encounters seems like it easily could be higher after last night. And she is, among everything else about her, clearly competent at handling corruptions. Traveling with her, at least long enough to determine if there is a manifestation occurring is probably the smart thing to do.

//I just don’t like it.\\\

 

//I’ll make sure to record that.\\\

 

//Thank you.\\\ She smiled. //Now years down the line, when we are old and world weary looking back at all our wild exploits of yesteryear we will be able to say, “hey, remember back when we went with that foolish girl? While the sun was at its zenith on 16th day of the 5th moon, Plessy declared that she did not like the situation. ‘I just don’t like it’ she said.” And then we will both nod sagely at each other, the obligation finally fulfilled.\\\

 

Nav looked intently into Plessy’s eyes. //Can we make out after the nodding session?\\\

 

//Yes. Everyone within a mile with quiver from the intensity of our passionate elder kissing. People will feel a great weight lifted. Spirits will flee. Corruptions will dissolve. It will be a Big Fucking Deal is what I’m saying here.\\\

 

//Wonderful.\\\

 

//Yes.\\\

 

//Anyway.\\\ Nav signed, //do you want to tell her or should I?\\\

 

//How about you do it.\\\ Plessy answered. //I have no desire to break the chilly facade I have been cultivating with her.\\\

 

Nav raised an eyebrow. //You know if we are going to be traveling with her it might be make everything more pleasant to at least be polite.\\\

 

//Then I guess we are fated to have a non enjoyable travel experience.\\\ Plessy signed curtly.

 

//I’m sure she isn’t that bad.\\\

 

//What’s this?\\\ Plessy dramatically flung her arm in front of her eyes before returning to signing. //A vision? Oh! The fates have spoken! This salt is strong and pure. It will last through the ages, transcending all memories of this era into myth eternal.\\\

 

//You have literally known this person for less than a day.\\\ Nav signed, shaking their head.

 

//Such Is Fate.\\\

 

Nav exasperatedly raised their eyebrows, smiling, before turning to Mizar. Mizar was emphatically gesturing towards the fire, talking in a low voice that was probably supposed to be a whisper.

 

“Okay, but why would anyone want to apply adhesion to waterfowl anyway? What could possibly cause this to be a widespread enough cultural phenomenon to justify having a whole type of tape dedicated for such a task?” Mizar ‘whispered’, confused.

 

Nav cleared their throat.

 

“Oh, do you guys know what you’re going to do now?” Mizar turned to them, perking up.

 

“Yeah. We’ll go with you for a while. After last night the advantages of numbers seems pretty useful.”

 

“Great!” Mizar cheerfully said. “My plan was to take one of the ancient paths from the ruins. Apparently they should be a pretty straight path through the mountains.”

 

“Do you think it’s safe to go back to the ruin?” Nav asked. “That corruption shed quite a bit.”

 

“It hasn’t even been a day, I doubt that anything significant could have formed yet,” Mizar replied. “And if something has I’ll just have to beat it into the ground!”

 

 

* * *

 

They took a new route through the ruins that gave them a wide berth from where the corruption had collapsed. A few pigeons quickly flew away from them as they walked through. The afternoon sun illuminated the area, intensely reflected off the glass that still made up the sides of many buildings. Plants had overtaken much of the area, with short hardy brush breaking through the cement ground and massive tangles of vines clinging to the sides of the buildings, forming perforated living walls of green in the space between them. Nothing pulled itself out of its ancient resting place to attack them. It was quiet, save for the steady songs of insects.

 

“So do you know which path we’re taking, outside of just one that goes north?” Nav asked.

 

“Of course! This place is actually in pretty good condition still, and a lot of the original signage is still legible. It’s amazing just how much was here before the calamity. Such a strange society too, there is so much redundancy and options.” Mizar said, smiling. “And some of the services that were provided are super weird! There were so many people that lived here, so hyper focused on such specialized and wonderfully useless tasks. It would have been amazing to see in it’s heyday.”

 

“You can read the ancient writings?” Nav asked. “I’ve never met anyone who could.”

 

“I learned when I was a child. My community put a large importance in those before us, and as the shamen apparent it was important that I could read their writing. My exponent was trying to learn the cause of the calamity, but I’ve always been more interested in what our predecessors knew about magic. Most of writings on the subject assume that you have access to functional infrastructure and technology though, so that sucks.” Mizar was smiling fondly. “The more mundane stuff can still be pretty cool though. Yesterday I found a building that existed to connect people with other people who would spend the majority of their day cleaning the first person's space. Imagine having so little happening that you could spend hours each day doing nothing but cleaning for someone else. Or having a space so large with so much stuff that the people residing in it can’t keep it clean themselves, which was apparently a common enough problem that there was a whole dedicated place to find a stranger to go into your space to clean it for you!”

 

“Yesterday? When did you get here?” Nav asked.

 

“I’ve been here a couple days now. Alcor said that something would occur here, and I can never resist a thing, so I came.” She dramatically sighed. “That’s the problem with going off of vague guidance of the future, there’s so much down time. I was pretty much just wandered around trying to learn how the city ticked until I saw your flare.”

 

“Huh.” Nav said. “You know, for some reason I had assumed you just got here right before us.”

 

“That would have been great! Super dramatic. But it was not to be.” Mizar said. “I did find what should be a pretty direct route to where I’m going though, so all that dicking around did come to something at least. The path becomes Lindquist’s way further down if you’re familiar.”

 

“The goat herder use Lindquist’s way a lot, it’s in pretty good condition.” Nav thought a moment. “I thought it went East though?”

 

“Only for a bit. Once It hits the hills it goes pretty much straight northwest.”

 

The street in front of them rose, turning steadily until it reached an overpass above them.

 

Mizar stopped. “Well, here we are,” she said, dramatically gesturing to the rising road. “This is it. A straight path to the frozen north, Lindquist’s Way. Or as the ancients called it, ‘Highway 6-18N’.”

 

The small group started to climb the steep ramp.

 

* * *

 

“So, why were the corruptions avoiding the bunker then? Was your spirit driving them away or something?” Nav asked.

 

They had been traveling a few days now, and the sparse bushland was beginning to be overtaken by grass and gentle hills.

 

Mizar stopped briefly. “I… completely forgot I was going to investigate that. I didn’t see anything obvious where I was, but I’m pretty sure all the cool shit happened on deeper levels then I could get to.”

 

* **Eh, it wasn’t like it was anything you would have been able to exploit anyway.** * Alcor said to Mizar.

 

“Wait,” Mizar turned to him, her eyes wide. “You know what caused it?”

 

* **Pretty sure so. A few centuries before the Calamity a group of morons in that bunker did a ritual that was, I think, an attempt to resurrect a powerful and long dead demon.*** Alcor was floating along on his side. ***I’m not really sure what they were actually hoping to accomplish, but in an impressively stupid move they ended up calling upon his true name, the magical backlash of which killed everyone in the area. This, combined with the years of fucked up shit they had been doing really messed up the local mana field to the point that it is incredibly repulsive to anything with any magic sensitivity, which apparently including mindless animated constructs.** *

 

“Well that’s disappointing,” Mizar turned to the others and explained, “apparently some old dead dudes just wrecked the joint with their hubris so hard that even corruptions know better than to mess with it. And I’m not quite dedicated enough to this whole ‘purging corruption’ thing yet that I willing to do it at the cost of what little habitable space we have left. And myself.”

 

“Dying does sound like a pretty big obstacle to overcome.” Nav commented.

 

“I’ll make an amazing ghost,” she said. “We’ll call it plan B.”

 

“So even corruptions are smart enough to avoid the place... and you spent how long there?” Plessy said.

 

Mizar laughed. “Who has time for common sense when you have a whole bunker of the damned to explore?”

 

In the distance, a horn sounded.

 

“You two know who that’s likely to be?” Mizar asked.

 

“Not really. That wasn’t the call of any of the stormwalkers that normally pass through here, and there isn’t really anyone who would be living here this time of year.” Nav responded.

 

“Craddock.” Plessy suggested.

 

“Yeah but the Craddock’s are super isolationist. I’ve never heard of them leaving their walls.”

  
Someone was approaching. They ran, panicked, through the tall golden grass that whipped past their chest. Although they visibly flinched when the horn sounded they did not look behind them.

 

“So, you think we should be doing something here?” Nav asked.

 

“Let’s just watch for now. I want to see how this plays out,” Mizar said. “If it’s a corruption they could probably use my services, and if they are running from something else, well, we’ll just have to see. Either way I am not just gonna run into grass that tall without knowing what’s happening.”

 

“Is that caution I hear?” Plessy asked, incredulously. “Just, staying here, when there is such a prime wind to throw it in? Are you feeling alright?”

 

“Is that a challenge I hear, punk?” Mizar asked, grinning widely. “Cause I will totally not actually go down there and stick to my initial plan, but I will think about it pretty hard. I could narrate if you want. Hypothetical me’s gonna pick up that guy up and carry them back here all safe like. Then smash the massive corruption that was rapidly catching up with my staff. Hypothetical corruption’s a… it’s the moon. The moon has secretly been evil this whole time, and I will show her the true path of the righteous.”

 

“Hypothetical you finds her foot caught. She is falling. She never saw the mole people coming.” Nav muttered.

 

“Hypothetical me is pulled up by the moon’s awesome gravity. She’s in this to win. The ascent is largely uncontrolled, but by smashing her staff into the moon’s surface, she can steady herself, and start the long process of purging the very moon.”

 

“Wouldn’t that awesome gravity fuck up the surroundings a lot?” Nav asked.

 

“Probably? I’m not a scientist.”

 

The running person was getting close enough that some of their features could be made out. They were some kind of avian, with very dark skin and bold blue and white plumage. One of their wings was held closely to their body, while the other was flared out, making adjusting to their balance as they moved.

 

The horn sounded again. Something could be seen from the direction it came from, something wide. A plume of white smoke rose above it. It was moving quickly.

 

“HEY!” Mizar shouted at the avian. “YOU OKAY?”

 

Their head feathers puffed slightly at her words. They shouted something, but not quite loud enough that it could be made out. Their speed picked up a little.

 

“I CAN’T ACTUALLY HEAR YOU BUT I’M GOING TO ASSUME THAT WAS A NO.”

 

As the runner approached the cracked and aging road, they started to talk again.

 

“Please help me I didn’t… I can’t go back.” They were panting heavily. Up close it was apparent that their was something very wrong with the wing that they held close to themself; the wrist at an odd angle, unaligned with the rest of the wing, and numerous feathers were missing or broken.

 

“I’ll do my best. What’s the actual problem?” Mizar said.

 

“They’re going to… I. I broke taboo. And they’re. I don’t. I can’t go back, I can’t.” They said, stumbling over their words.

 

“What kinda ‘taboo’ are we talking here?” Mizar asked, cocking her head.

 

“It was, I don’t think you would understand, you're not from within the walls, but I,” they paused, composing their thoughts for a moment. “There were a family of pixies that lived just beyond, and I was tending the crops right against the walls. We can’t. We shouldn’t, aren't suppose to talk to outsiders. But I was all alone and they had so many stories that weren’t like anything I had heard before.”

 

“You’re telling me that you’re being driven from your community because you talked with some pixies.” Mizar said, slowly.

 

“He says that talking to outsiders invites evil into the walls.” They rubbed their hands together. “He- uh, Craddock that is, he says that his rules are the only things keeping us safe from the corruptions. Most… we don’t really believe him, but we can’t really leave.”

 

“Oh.” Said Nav, rather quietly. “I had no idea. We had done some basic trade with your community before, and noticed the tension, but I had always assumed that it was the decision of the group.”

 

Plessy’s fists and jaw was clenched. She was glaring at the approaching smoke.

 

“I’m Nav, by the way. They/them.” They smiled softly. “Who are you?”

 

“I’m Farha. And I’m a he? Is that. If that’s okay?” He said, looking at the ground.

 

“There your pronouns Farha. You really don’t need to ask for permission on your own identity.” Nav said.

 

“Oh.” Farha ran his hand down one of his head feathers, eyes darting wherever a person wasn’t. “I guess that would makes sense…”

 

“If anyone tries to cause shit about it just punch ‘em. That’s what I do.” Mizar said.

 

“I don’t think that would be… they would probably punch back right? I don’t want trouble…”

 

Mizar knelt down, making her eyes level with the short avian. “Hey. You made it out, and I am going to make sure that you stay out, okay? No one should have to live in that kind of fear, and no one will if I have anything to say about it.”

 

The horn sounded again. Farha shuttered. “They’re coming… we need to get out of here. They aren’t. Won’t let me just leave.”

 

“No.” Mizar said. “We are not going to let them hunt us like this is just some sort of game. We are not going to let them force us into doing things by their terms. I know what I’m doing, Farha, and I’m going to make sure that that bastard never touches a feather on your head again!”

 

“But how? He has the hunters with him…” Farha took a step back, refusing to meet Mizar’s intense stare. “I’m just causing you trouble, aren't I… I shouldn’t have come...”

 

“Trouble? Hah!” Mizar laughed. “From what you’ve said I’m pretty sure I know exactly what type of guy this ‘Craddock’ fuck is, and let me tell you, this opportunity you’re giving me is the exact opposite of a problem. Well, at least for me." She pu a hand on her chin. "I’m sure he’ll beg to differ by the time I’m done with him.”

 

“But, he’s really strong.”

 

“So am I!” Mizar said, her grin eerily wide. And for just a moment, Farha could swear that he saw a large shadow behind her, black form split by a smile of too many too sharp teeth.

 

With that Mizar spun around, toward Farha’s pursuers. The smoke-spewing object was approaching fast. It was some sort of old vehicle, a flatbed on massive tires that tore at the tall grass of the plain. Much of the original front had been destroyed, and a massive goat skull, two feet long and covered in arcane script was sitting in place of the complicated tech that had originally been used to move it. A man stood, stoic, directly behind the skull, staring at the small group. Three people flanked him, each one with a large brown dog that sat calmly at their feet. A pipe rose out of the back of the vehicle, pouring out smoke.

 

Mizar took a deep breath and relaxed her posture. She stood calmly, casually, and watched as the hunting party come to them, looking them over. The man in the front must be Craddock, she decided. He was human, quite fit but past his prime. He was pristine, his beige skin clear and clean and his long brown hair neatly contained in a tight braid. The black robes that adorned him showed absolutely no sign of wear.

 

There was a large eye glyph carved into the center of the goat skull. She wondered how many people were watching them from afar. This was, it would seem, more than just a sadistic game. This was a demonstration. A show. She smiled, a normal, controlled smile. On anyone else it might have looked serene. On her, it looked concerningly out of place.

 

This was going to be one hell of a show.

 

The vehicle was quite close now, and gracefully glided to a stop on the road in front of them, giving the riders a significant height advantage. Craddock briefly glared at Mizar, but quickly focused his gaze on Farha.

 

“Farha.” He said, his voice deep and grave. “I gave you my blessing. I gave you a sanctuary, a life. And this is how you respond? You give into the temptations of the gods, invite evil into our community. Invite evil into the only sanctuary left in this forsaken land. Into your home, into the homes of your family, your neighbors, into -”

 

“Excuse me,” Mizar said, innocently. “Is there a problem here?”

 

Farha was standing completely still, feathers raised, making his head look twice its normal size.

 

“And now you hide behind an outsider? Too cowardly to even face the consequences of your own actions, you must drag more darkness to our door? And you,” Craddock glared at Mizar as a cat might at mouse that had the audacity to eat out of its bowl. “Who are you to dare interfere with my divine justice?”

 

“Oh, I am merely a humble priestess, purging the corruption from the world.” She smiled, a mockery of sweetness, “And I don’t know much about any divine justice, but it seems to me that Farha is perfectly willing to leave your sanctuary without bringing any more evil within. I don’t see any reason this needs to escalate any further.”

 

“You do not have any idea what you are talking about.” His voice filled the area. “I will not have some interloper interfere with my duty. I will do what is necessary to keep the corruption from my doors.”

 

“Well if that’s what you’re worried about, I might be able to provide a more beneficial long term solution.”

 

“Highly doubtful.” He sneered at her. “Now I do believe that you have wasted enough of our time, so -”

 

“Just hear me out,” she said, cutting him off. “It pains me greatly to see a community living in such fear. As I said, I am working to purge the world of corruption. I propose to you a deal of sorts, I will show you a display of my abilities to follow through on that, and if you have any criticism of my methods or can point out any flaw, I will concede defeat. You will have proven your divine right and I will surrender to your forces for whatever judgement you deem worthy. But If you cannot find a flaw with what I do, you are welcome to take my methods and use them however you wish, but you will never force Farha into something he doesn’t want again.”

 

The wind was blowing gently from behind Mizar, making her long sleeves and slit skirt flow in a surprising elegant manner.

 

“As much as I would love to see you make a fool of yourself, I fail to see how you could demonstrate anything, as there’s no signs of corruption around here.” He said.

 

“Oh,” she said, putting her hands together, “that's where you’re wrong. See, corruptions don’t just spring out of nowhere, they are formed through a gradual buildup of energy and power. If you know what you’re looking for, it’s perfectly detectable. And once you detect it, it’s a fairly simple matter to cut it away. I wouldn’t have suggested a demonstration if the conditions here were anything less than perfect.”

 

“So show me.” He said, and made a small gesture behind him. “And I warn you, if I find that you were merely wasting my time you will regret that you ever dared to speak to me.”

 

At his gesture, the dogs behind him sprung up, ready to pounce. They were still on leashes, presumably their handlers were waiting for a different signal before setting them loose.

 

Mizar took a deep breath, straightening her posture.

 

“Generally,” she began, taking a step forward “the hardest part is identification. The signs of early corruption can be almost impossible to spot, and confirmation can be a very time consuming project. Fortunately, I have already found a notable source of corruption, so we don’t have to go through all of that at this specific moment. If you want, I would be happy to talk about how one goes about this after we are done here. You then need a device of purification, almost anything can work for this as long as you wield it with intent and power. Once you have those two things it’s an amazingly simple ritual, that can easily be adjusted for almost any circumstance. Like so.”

 

Mizar crouched down, left leg held in front of her, toes just barely touching the ground. Her arms were held out straight, diagonally to her body. She took a deep breath and spread her fingers out, and crouched with left leg sticking out and the right curled beneath her, striking her pointer and index fingers against the ground. Blue fire erupted around her in a perfect circle. She looked at Craddock and grinned, wide and unnerving, her teeth colored blue by the bright flame. Mizar lept, landing neatly on the goat skull in a crouch with her left arm by her right leg, and she shot up like a bolt of lightning, bringing her arm across her body in an instant.

 

Blood dripped off the tip of her knife.

 

Croddock stumbled back, a hand clutching his bleeding throat, desperately gasping for air that just wouldn’t come.

 

The dogs moved to him, whining softly, their handlers behind him staring, wide-eyed.

 

“So that’s the gist of it,” Mizar said, looking down at the dying man. “So, what do you think? Any comments?”

 

She waited a moment. He failed to respond with anything but failing gasps.

 

“No? Well then. I guess it’s settled. You’re just going to leave this kid alone.” She looked down at herself. “Ugh, you got your blood all over. Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean this thin fluttery cloth?”

 

She turned to Alcor. “Hey, think you could give me a hand here?”

 

* **Sure.  You got any plans for that body?** *

 

“Well I sure do now! You take it in exchange for getting all this blood out, sounds good?”

 

Alcor smiled. * **It’s a deal** *

 

He held out his fist, which she punched. A puff of blue flame erupted around the fist-bump, and in a flash of blue light the body was gone and Mizar’s clothing was clean. The dogs leapt back in surprise.

 

Everyone was staring at her.

 

“You okay kid?” She asked Farha.

 

“What”, he stood, wide eyed with his feathers plastered close to his body. “What did you do?”

 

“Exactly what I said I was going to. There’s many types of corruption,” she said, stabbing her knife back into the sheath above her ankle. “I’ve met people like him before. Gathering power specifically to control and manipulate for their own benefit. It’s despicable. At least the magical corruptions don’t have the capacity understand what they are doing.”

 

“Who are you?” Asked one of the dog’s handlers, a tall woman with skin as dark as her leather outfit and bright red curls. “What happened to his body?”

 

“I,” She said, pulling her staff out from her side pouch and dramatically striking it to the ground, “am Mizar, High Priestess of the Guiding Light. As for your second question, that’s the sort of thing that you really don’t want to ask while dealing with spirits.”

 

“ **Are you sure? You are talking to mostly humans. Humans love hearing about sacrificial disembowelment of beloved dictators.** ” Alcor said to her.

 

“Learning what questions not to ask is one of the most important parts of working with spirits, really.” Mizar stated.

 

“You work with spirits?” The woman asked, glaring, her right arm moving to a blade at her hip. “What do you want of us? To take our children and our labor? Or are you simply after sacrificial lambs?”

 

“What? Fuck no!” Mizar looked horrified as she swung her staff perpendicular to herself. “I don’t want to make you do anything! Live your lives, they’re all you got. Just don’t go around threatening people, especially people who depend on you! It isn’t hard.

“I wasn’t lying about what I said earlier,” she continued. “Okay, the humble thing was bullshit but it should be obvious that if anyone says they are humble they are probably lying. Point is I am literally trying to get rid of the corruptions - mostly the magical kind. People have spent too long living in too much fear and I’m done sitting around being afraid. These things aren’t some inevitable reality of the world you know, they were caused by something, and I refuse to believe they cannot be ended.”

 

“ **Or was that imps…** ” Alcor said, scrunching his face and looking into the distance.

 

“But you do work with spirits.” The woman said, her face still hostile but still withdrawing her arm slightly.

 

“Spirits are great! At least, they can be if you know what you’re doing.” Mizar started to smile again. “They definitely can be dangerous, but you wouldn’t believe the awesome feats that they can pull with just a small ritual. It’s incredible!”

 

“What’s it like to work with such a creature?”

 

“ **Okay I’m like, 90% sure that it’s imps that love watching their leaders be disemboweled.** ”

 

“It’s,“ Mizar shifted her gaze from the woman's face, “an experience.”

 

“ **Or was it? Humans do sometimes scream when they’re happy, right?** ”

 

“So…” One of the other dog handlers, a middle aged man with dark hair and pale skin, began, “what now? Craddock is dead, and you apparently don’t have any plans. Do we just... go home?”

 

“If that’s what you want, sure.” Mizar responded. “Do it! Go home. Think about what home means to you. Take your fate into your own hands! Make sure your home is a place you can thrive, and if you can’t make that work then make a new home. Take everything you can from this fucked up world you’re stuck on and embrace it for all it’s worth.”

 

“I was thinking a bit more short term then that, but I’ll keep the advice in mind.” He said.

 

“I…” Farha was slouched into themself, their feathers and good wing held tight to their core. “I don’t want… I’m not going to go back. If that’s.” He turned to Mizar. “If that’s okay with you? Just for a little.”

 

“I would love to have you come with us.” Mizar grinned.

 

The man looked at her intently. “So where exactly are you going?”

 

“There’s a whole bunch of old research from before the calamity up north. I’m going to get there and then fix the mistakes of the our predecessors.” She said. “What’s it to you?”

 

“Well I can’t speak for her, but it’s my sister.” He ran his hand through his thick hair. “This place has never been good to her. She has had problems walking since she was young, and this community can be very exclusionary. I’ve managed to use my position in the guard to make sure that she can have a life, but it isn’t a great one. I’ve always wanted to give her the option of going someplace else, someplace more accepting, but even if we could get out we wouldn’t know where to go. But if you’re going far you’re probably going to pass through other communities, right? If we could go with you maybe we could find one that’s a better fit.”

 

“If you’re willing to trust a total stranger with blood on her hands with your lives, I’m sure as fuck not going to discourage you! Although,” she paused, setting her finger on her mouth. “If we are going to be taking on quite a few extra people we might need more supplies. Think the community could afford to give some up? I’m sure I can make it worth their while.”

 

“Sure.” The dark woman said. “Come on aboard. Lets bring the foreign heathen straight into our walls, what could possibly go wrong?”

 

“Thanks!” Mizar said, hopping on the bed of the vehicle. She turned to Nav and Plessy. “You guys want to come too or should I come back here when I’m done?”

 

//I kinda want to see exactly how far this bullshit can go. Think you’re up to It?\\\ Nav signed to Plessy.

 

//I suppose at this point I’ve become invested in seeing this through until it crashes, fully realizing it’s destiny of magnificent train wreck.\\\ Plessy responded. //It would also probably be a good idea to make sure that the community is actually on the path of recovery. Assuming that Craddock wasn’t just a figurehead and that the community will actually be interested in moving past their isolationism, they are going to need some advice about how the world actually works.\\\

 

//It’s going to be pretty crowded.\\\

 

//That should be tolerable right now, and if it becomes too much I’ll just fake a vision or something.\\\ She touched her hand to her heart. //Oh no, a great fire is coming. Totally unavoidable. Nothing to be done. We must leave, and do so in small groups as not to catch the fire's attention. Such a tragedy.\\\

 

//Do be serious,\\\ Nav signed. //These people have spent most of their lives shunning magic and believing that it only brings ill; they would never trust a random prophet. You’ll have to start a real fire. It is the only way.\\\

 

//Obviously.\\\ Plessy smiled. //Now we should probably get on the thing already, people are staring.\\\

  
Nav took Plessy’s hand and they climbed onto the vehicle, with Farha cautiously following them. With everyone on board, it slowly rolled to a start, away from the old road and deep into the grassland.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mizar thinks about her life choices and something big is on the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been done for almost a month now, but one of my Beta's has been very busy and still hasn't had a chance to look it over. As such there might be some minor changes coming, but nothing that would effect the overall plot. 
> 
> I have no idea how this got so long. Future chapters should start getting shorter.

* **So why did you let them be?** * Alcor was lounging against the smallest of the nebula-patterned quail statues, which was merely two stories tall with colors drifting between cyan and violet.

 

“What?” Mizar looked up from the miniature trees that she had been sorting. Or that she was trying to sort; they kept slipping out of her hands before she could put them into their rightful places.

 

* **The people in the community we went through. With a bit more show and a little bit of my help you could have gotten much more than just trade.** * The flow of aubergine ants coming from the statue’s photo-realistic feathers shifted so as to flow as far away from the dream demon as possible.

 

Mizar shook the remaining trees from her hands, unable to actually place why she had been arranging them, or by what property they could even be sorted as they all looked and felt perfectly identical. “If I would just make them follow me, I wouldn’t be any better then that guy I killed.” She said.

 

* **But you would be closer to ruling the world.** * He pointed out, slowly pulling the long, sharp feathers from the statue.

 

“It’s not just about ruling,” she said, stirring the bowl of trees absently with a finger. They were melting together. “And that route would never be sustainable anyway. People following out of fear only follow until they notice how much they outnumber you. I don’t have the history to obscure that fact like the guy I killed did.”

 

* **I think you might be underestimating our combined abilities. That aside, what is it about? What else are you trying to accomplish?** * He drifted towards her on his stomach, fingers entwined under his chin.

 

“It’s about FIXING things! Restoring what was lost in the calamity, just like I said when we met. Making sure that people can live their lives without fear, that people like him don’t have the opportunity to force others into playing out their twisted fantasy.” She slammed her fist into her hand. The beaks of the statues dissolved into colorful leaves revealing a single writhing hand on each statue where the beaks had been. “I am NEVER going to be like him! And they are going to remember what I did today, what I didn’t do, and they will answer my call once I’m ready to give it.”

 

* **You’re not going to be like him, just kill people like him. Sure.** *

 

“It was a tense situation, alright? I didn’t have many options.” Mizar took a deep breath.

 

* **I’m also not sure that you’re right about how they are going to remember you. That man you killed wasn’t just ruling out of fear, it was a tool, yes, but by no means the only tool in his box. He had people who liked him. Shock and fear is what** ** _you_** **used to get through there - no one is going to fuck with she who took down the divine. But once time has passed and they get used to the idea that he was just human, well, anyone can kill a human. And life is going to get harder for them before it gets easier.** * Alcor floated close to her. * **But let’s say I’m wrong, that your assessment was right and they’ll follow you in a heartbeat. What are you waiting for?** **When are you going to make that call?** *

 

Mizar was quiet.

 

The bowl of ex-trees started to evaporate, filling the area with the smell of melted plastic and dry dog in a cloud of light green.

 

“I’ll focus on social conquering after I’ve both figured out and am ready to implement a way of slowing or halting the formations of constructs and storms. It’ll give people a good, mutually beneficial reason for following me that won't build resentment. It won’t be enough to make everyone listen to me, but I’m sure it will be enough to make the majority of people turn a blind eye when I do what I must.”  She flicked the small globs of iridescent tree goo from her hands, causing small metallic flowers to sprout where the droplets landed. The flowers were highly reflective and very sharp. “I wouldn’t want to acquire too many follower before then anyway; managing large groups takes effort and time that I really don’t have if I want to be seriously doing research. I would need to delegate someone else to take care of it, and I don’t really have anyone I trust with that level of responsibility yet.”

 

* **Not even me?** * Alcor rolled onto his back and placed his hand on his chest.

 

“Especially not you. You can’t even interact with anyone else,” Mizar said.

 

* **I can make myself corporeal** *   


“You can’t remember basic facts about polite interaction,”

 

* **I’m out of practice, I’m sure I’d pick it all up again pretty quick. It’s not like you’re much better anyway.** *

 

“I know more about proper manners than anyone should. I’m brash ‘cause I wanna be, but am perfectly capable of toning it down if I need to. You can’t even keep track of what screaming signifies.” She cocked an eyebrow, “Anyway, you make strategic decisions like having important conversation in dreams, despite having been told that memories between dreams and the waking world don’t necessarily match up.”

 

* **What, would you rather I have this conversation in front of all those people you’re trying to convince that you’re a good person who is definitely not trying to take over the planet? I am perfectly willing talk to you all you want while you’re awake but figured you might want some privacy.** **Anyway,** * Alcor stretched himself out, limbs twitching like glitching graphics, * **It isn’t like there is any vital information you need to carry out of this conversation, so I don’t see any problem with talking here.** *

 

“You know,” Mizar said, watching a flock of adorable kidneys swim by. “Sometimes it’s nice to remember what you’ve told people, even if it isn’t vital. Also I’m not sure if you can really trust what I’m saying when my brain’s conjuring shit like that.” She gestured at the quail statues, the beak-hands of which were peeling away, revealing many more hands, smaller hands, under the skin. The small hands were dripping from the main statues and skittering away.

 

* **Oh this isn’t coming from you anymore. Having conversations with people in deep sleep is pretty worthless, so generally I have a nightmare maintain the dreamspace and wake the person a bit. This is all from That of Teeth. He’s wanted to meet you for awhile now.** *

 

 **“** M͓̤͕̯̈́͂ͭ̎U̜͈̳ͤ̎̒̏͗ͮͮ̌͢͠͡Rͦ҉̪̜͚R͊ͭ҉̷̟̯͔R̴͎͕̰̙͙̺̦͇ͬͭ **”** Bleeted a completely normal sheep, with completely normal sheep features like vantablack wool, eyes, an external skull. jagged toothed-plates, eyes, twisted horns separating his furry neck from his boney head, and eyes.

 

“You made all this?” Mizar asked. “It’s quite nice.”

 

“m̺̺͖ͤ͐u̬͖͎͓̞̕r̊́̌ͦ̔ͨ͐r̖̪ͮͧ̉ͫ͑r̝̪̣ŗͧ͆́̇,” the nightmare… purred? Drawing his tail out to obscure his face.

 

* **So you’re really going to wait until you have a practical solution before storming the place?** *

 

“Yeah,” Mizar said, “it seems like the most plausible way to actually succeed. Why, is there something you’re not telling me about the feasibility of safely channeling the excess energy?”

 

* **No, it’s not that,** * Alcor slowly drifted around. ***The energy is unstable enough that it’s already condensing itself, that’s why you get all those crystals. Making a device or ritual to channel it in a way so it doesn’t charge random objects with vengeful intent is perfectly plausible.** *

 

“So what’s the problem then?” Mizar’s eyes narrowed. “You’re producing clouds of some color I can’t process. You only do that when something's wrong.”

 

* **It’s nothing,** * He dispersed the murple cloud that hung around him with a few flaps of his wings. * **It’s just… miles of walking, idle talk, who knows how long studying…** *He flung his neck back, looking her in the eyes from where he drifted on his back. * **It’s all so boring, Mizar!** *

 

Mizar laughed. “Aren’t you suppose to be some kind of ancient being of unfathomable power? You think by now you would have learned a little patience.”

 

* **I’ve** **_been_ ** **patient, Mizar. It’s been centuries. Centuries Mizar!** * He drooped. * **God, you go into mourning for just a decade or two and when you return to the plane everyone’s gone and blown themselves up. Highly inconsiderate of them. They could've at least had the decency to wait till I came back, I bet that would have been** **_really_ ** **entertaining to watch.** *

 

“So what actually happened at the calamity?” Mizar asked.

 

* **Oh you know, the usual,** * Alcor said, snatching one of the low flying kidneys from the sky and slowly pulling long strings of flesh from it. * **Hubris of man. Science going too far. Small but  significant problems getting overlooked. That sort of thing.** *

 

“All those extraordinary things they made and all that knowledge and it just lead to the ruin of everything, huh?”

 

* **Well they sure weren’t going to be taken out by any natural disasters at that point. Get enough control of the planet and you become your only threat.** * He paused, and chucked the kidney into his mouth. * **Honestly I’m amazed it took as long as it did, people have had the ability to wipe out most civilization for longer than I’ve existed.** *

 

“So you think it’s inevitable that a civilization will be destroyed?” She kicked one of the metallic flowers, slicing her foot but sending it flying. Instead of pain the sickeningly sweet taste of honey spread up her leg.

 

* **Statistically it’s a certainty. It isn’t really a judgement on the civilization though. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing but demons.** *

 

“Demons can still be killed though, wouldn’t that make their end a statistical certainty as well?”

 

* **Well, most demons. And many that can die undoubtedly will as the universe marches steadily towards total emptiness.** *

 

“Is this the sort of crap you start to think about when you’re left to your own devices? No wonder you’re so desperate for things to grab your attention.” Mizar kicked one of the flowers directly at Alcor. “Well don’t worry your pretty little hat over it, I’m sure it will be more interesting then you’re giving it credit for. I mean shit I’ve already killed one guy, that’s like, right up your alley right?”

 

* **That was pretty fun,** * Alcor smiled, watching a golden trickle slowly ooze from where the flower had struck him. * **And I don’t know if I mentioned, but that was an impressively worded ‘deal’ you made before killing him. Completely pointless for the circumstances, but still. It’s almost a pity that you aren’t going to work with other demons, you definitely have the knack for loopholes.** *

 

“Who says I’m not going to work with other demons?” She grinned. “I think we both know I’ll do whatever I feel is necessary to get what I want.”

 

* **As your deal bound partner I think I have the right to declare this religion monotheistic.** * He spread his teeth across his face in a twisted likeness of a smile. * **And nothing in our deal says that I can’t eat the competition, so partner or not I can certainly enforce that declaration.** *

 

“The deal _was_ pretty vague. I could easily argue that ‘what was lost in the calamity’ was, in fact, an active community of summoners and diverse summoning targets.” Mizar put a finger on her chin.”You know, I hadn’t actually thought about this much, but I could make that statement mean almost anything...”

 

* **Hey, would you look at that, you’re waking up. What a tragedy that this important strategic meeting must be cut short, but that’s just the way the tortoise crumbles.** *

  


Mizar awoke to the vivid image of a vague approximation of a ram in a frilly pink sweater taking a bow on a massive wooden stage.

 

* * *

 

“What’s that you’re drawing?” Farha asked, perched on a crumbling cement wedge.

 

Mizar looked up from the intricately overlapping loops she was drawing onto her arm. “It’s a sigil. It convinces my body develop more feminine traits, cause the stupid thing won’t without help. It’s fantastic, but it wears out after a while so I gotta redo it.”

 

“Magic can do that?” Farha leaned forward inspecting the half-drawn cerulean design. “Do you think that it might. You know. Could a sigil be made that works like that but backwards?” He leaned back, shifting his gaze to the ground.

 

“You mean one that encourages masculine traits? Not sure backwards is quite the right word, but yeah we can do that. Easily.” She grinned. “Want me to show you how?”

 

His neck straightened. “Yes.” He put a hand to his beak, scraping the edge with a finger. “But would that even… if it’s the same thing that you’re using wouldn’t... Could human traits pop up or something?”

 

“It ain’t a human thing.” She dipped her pen back into her ink and resumed drawing. “Most animals have biological systems that tell their bodies what to grow where and junk, and these systems use the same components regardless of species. Different ratios of these components lead to the development of different traits. This sigil doesn’t tell my body directly to stop growing chest hair and make my voice tolerable, it tells it to change the ratio of those components and then the body reacts accordingly. Any humanoid person could almost certainly use this, and I would reckon most biologically based people could too.”

 

“That’s really cool.” Farha said slowly. “How does it work?”

 

“I drew up a guide a few years back that I could grab for you. Spirits know I don’t need it any more, I could draw it blindfolded at this point.” She looked up from her arm. “Gotta few things you should know first though. When you first start using it, it’s kinda like hitting puberty again, things get weird. It also takes energy from your body, which is good if you don't want grow crystalline tumors, but it does mean that you are going to get a bit more hungry than before. Some people do just react badly to it in general, which is really a risk with any body magic, but you would generally find this out almost immediately so the chance of long term damage is small. Oh! Also no matter how tempting it is do not start by making the spell as strong as you can. Your body will _not_ like it and you will get really sick for like, a month and a half. It fucking sucks.”

 

“That all makes sense, I guess.” Farha paused. “So did your spirit show you this?”

 

“Nah, I’ve known about it since I was a kid. My exponent was pretty discouraging about it, but that never stopped me.”

 

“Is that why you left? Your old community that is.”

 

“What? Nah, my leaving that community was… that was something else entirely. He might have disapproved of my use of personal magic but it’s not like he ever tried to stop me. He just thought that since modding your body with magic had risks it wasn’t worth it unless you were in an emergency. He never really felt uncomfortable existing I don't think.”

 

“So you definitely think it’s worth the risks?”

 

“Oh fuck yeah. Fine tuning this sigil was one of the best things that happened to me.” She sighed. “I hated the way my voice sounded before. I could tolerate the other stuff, but ever since I hit first puberty I couldn’t stand the way I sounded. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t me, and I hated it. Believe it or not I was actually quiet then! They were always trying to get me to shut up when I was a little kid but I was never any good at it until my voice dropped. That… that was a fucking shit time to be alive.”

 

“I’m not really sure this is... “ Farha stopped and took a deep breath. “I don’t like, really hate anything about my body? I just… really think I could like it a lot more.”

 

“So go for it! There isn’t some line somewhere that says you must be this miserable to change things. Your body is yours, do whatever you want with it that makes you happy. If you find it isn’t what you wanted you can always stop.” Mizar laughed. “Fuck this sigil is mild as hell compared to what some people do. I met someone who drank water with silver in it so their skin would turn grey. I also briefly knew a couple where one of them cut off one of their horns to transplant onto the other, but I’m not sure if that actually worked long term. Point is, life is short and we’re all going to die so you might as well go out as rad as possible.”

 

“Thats…” Farha shifted his eyes from Mizar. “A different way of looking at things. I guess. I don’t really think about death much. Or, I try not to. We were always told to focus on a brighter future, you know? With proper preparation the worst ills will be held off. Discomfort is a sign of growth. Only by suffering through it can you become a better person. And to become the best person you can be is to become close to the gods and bliss.”

 

“There is nothing about that that isn’t bullshit.” Mizar said. “No offence.”

 

“I mean,” Farha looked away, scratching his neck. “I think that well, planning and saving is probably never a bad thing. Right? You can never be over prepared when catastrophe strikes.”

 

“Planning fine and all, until you start ignoring your present needs. Living not just with the future in mind but _for_ a future that might happen... “ She shook her head. “Fuck that. Discomfort is a sign that something should change. You become a better person by figuring out what that means to you is and striving for it, not by having other people try to mold you, not by having life shit on you. It isn’t always pleasant, but nothing’s always pleasant.

“Proper preparation is great, but if you convince a whole community that because they have a plan everything’s safe forever it’s going to be a problem. Life’s chaotic! Shit gets irrevocably fucked sometimes! No amount of planning can account for just how much random chance can fuck everything up.” She waved her pen arm around. “Like, you lived in an isolated community. Get enough stores and you can live through a bad year or two of drought or whatever, but you also become super susceptible to epidemics. Keeping your livestock that close to your people might keep them safe from predation or theft, but it’s a breeding ground for illness, which is a lot harder to deal with because you refuse to use magic, but trying to do significant magic requires either spirits, who are generally unreliable, or environmental energy, which is susceptible to unpredictable corruption. And no matter what you do there’s always a chance that a manifestation will happen to close and the whole area will become uninhabitable.”

 

“So, don’t ever plan for anything because you might be wrong? Is that really… That doesn’t seem like it would end well…”

 

“It’s not that I think any planning is bad, I did manage to survive to be an adult after all, and only like, sixty percent of that was dumb luck.” Mizar absently drew some meaningless loops on her leg. “I just think that should consider how dedicated they are to their plans. Cause if you spend your whole life building up to some greater future what are you going to do if it all falls apart? You shouldn’t be living for your future self’s sake! They might not ever exist and they is nothing you can do to erase that fact. Present you matters. Present you is the most important you. Plan but don’t live for those plans. And really don’t, as a community, build up the lives of the next generation completely around a single plan, because then those kids won’t know anything else and when it all falls apart they will be completely lost without any idea how to move on or what else they even could do.”

 

Heavy boots crunched on the fine gravel of the campsite.

 

“You two going to sit here chattering all day?” Nav crouched beside them. “Think the group’s about ready to head out, if it’s all the same to you.”

 

“You in a rush?” Mizar asked, finishing a few lines and capping her bottle of ink.

 

“Plessy’s anxious about something. Can’t tell if something’s coming or if the crowd’s a bit much, but either way I’ll feel better moving.”

 

“The crowd?” Farha asked.

 

“Could you speak up a bit?” Nav asked, grabbing a cloth bundle from the ground. “My hearing's not great.”

 

“Oh, right.” Farha stood up and stretched arms and wing. “I was just, with the crowd, there only five of us, right? We didn’t like, pick up some more ghosts or spirits or something did we?”

 

“Nah, it’s just us. Well, and that spirit that hangs around Mizar I guess. Six people’s just a lot when you normally only travel in a pair.”

 

“Oh...  We aren’t like, being a problem are we?” Farha ran his fingers along a feather. “I wouldn’t want to uh, I mean if you guys were like-”

 

“It’s fine, kid.” Nav interrupted, walking towards the sled. “Maybe if you were going to stay long term it might be an issue, but Plessy will be fine for the time it takes for us to find someone to dump you with. Strays happen.”

 

“So I have a question about that,” said Nadeau, the former guardsman’s sister.

 

She was on some of the packed supplies, crutches resting next to her. Her dark brown hair was cut short in a crown of irregular spikes. She had a slightly darker complexion than her brother, Ladik, who was finishing up packing things beside her.

 

“You’ve said that you’re going into new territory,” she said. “Territory that you aren't that familiar with. How are we going to find someplace safe to stay?”

 

“You almost always get communities along old roads like this.” Nav said. “These grasslands seem pretty farmable, so we are almost guaranteed to run into some agricultural groups.”

 

“Okay, that answers half the question.” She leaned forward. “How do we make sure these strangers, that we know nothing about, are willing to have nice conversation instead of just, I don’t know, cutting us down for all these supplies that we’re toting around?”

 

“Well, Plessy does have some amount of future sense, and Mizar’s spirit can probably do something similar if he wanted to, but honestly it’s largely irrelevant.” Nav added their bundle to the pile on the sled. “For the most part, people just don’t do things like that. Even ignoring all the moral and social reasons that a community wouldn’t do such a thing, any violent conflict has the chance of you losing one of your own, which is a higher cost than most people can afford. There are definitely shitty people out there who will lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want, but the line is generally drawn at violence.”

 

 

“So what, it’s just brought out at special occasions then?” She crossed her arms. “Like when you wander into judicial affairs of a private community?”

 

“I’ll admit, that is not how I expected that situation to play out. Mizar’s response to that was a bit extreme.”

 

“Hey!” Mizar shouted. “I wasn’t the one to make that situation violent. That was already violent when we arrived. All I did was redirect the violence back to its source. I even gave the guy a chance to back down! I mean, he obviously wasn’t going to take it, but if by some miracle I had totally misread what was going on and he did I would have let him leave.”

 

“He deserved it,” Plessy quietly said to no one in particular.

 

“So does ‘redirecting violence’ happen often around you?” Nadeau asked, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Nah,” Mizar adjusted her sleeves. “That’s actually the first time I seriously hurt anyone. Well, intentionally at any rate.”

 

“You accidentally killed someone with a knife before?” Nadeau asked.

 

“It wasn’t a knife and she didn’t die.” Mizar crossed her arms. “I wasn’t ever _that_ bad at basic restraint.”

 

“So what did happen?”

 

“Nothing that interesting, honestly.” She rubbed her eye. “When I was a teen I got really into the idea of learning combat skills. I had some anger issues and was hoping that if I could just get strong enough then I make be able things better somehow. In retrospect, I didn’t actually want much that could be done using violence, but I was an angry kid.

“When I found someone who could teach me I took to it like a crystal to an engine. The physical exertion, the reflexive decision making, it was amazing and unlike anything I had been taught before. I loved that shit! And I was sometimes a little to enthusiastic. While sparring once I hit a bit to hard and broke a bone. It wasn’t really a huge deal, it healed alright and she understood that these things happen, but I felt just awful about it. Started rethinking a lot of stuff then.”

 

“And then you realized the errors of your ways and decided to become a priest and ‘heal’ the world, huh?”

 

“Nah, there were loads of boring shit that happened between then and me meeting this guy!” She said, grandly gesturing next to her.

 

“Coming?” Plessy asked sharply, her eyes narrow.

 

“I think we’re all packed yeah.” Nav said.

 

* * *

 

 

The sun was high in the sky, casting short shadows onto the black road ahead of them. There hadn’t been any signs that other people might exist since they left the community behind them. There hadn’t been any sign that anything besides grass might exist, really.

 

“So Nadeau,” Mizar said. “I have a question for you.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You don’t trust me.” Mizar stated.

 

“Oh gods no. Not even a little.”

 

“But you chose to come with us anyway. Why?”

 

“I may trust you about as far as I could punt you, but I’m sure as hell are not staying in that pit of despair for another moment.” She stretched her arms over her head. “I spent my whole life in that awful community. Hated every moment of it. I used to daydream about burning it down before my little bro here became a thing. He’s the only good thing that place ever brought about as far as I’m concerned.

“When you get down to it,” she said, “I could easily die on this trip, but I least I managed to die out of that shit hole, which is a bigger win than I thought I could manage a week ago.”

 

“That bad, huh?” Nav asked.

 

“Wouldn’t go back for nothin. Especially now that Craddock is dead.” She laughed. “Everything’s going to be such hell without him.”

 

“You sure?” Mizar said. “The council seemed to know what they were doing.”

 

“Kid, I lived in that trash heap every day of my life, I think I know what I’m talking about.” She grimaced. “Yeah, the high and glorious counsel knows how to run the place logistically, gods know they were doing most of the actual work before, but they aren’t respected. Craddock was The Divine. He was set to bring everyone closer to the gods and when his righteous work was finished ascend among their ranks.

“Lots of people, hell most people, felt like Craddock’s work made their lives better whether or not they believed the myths. He might exaggerate just how dangerous the world beyond the walls is, but there clearly is a danger, and He keeps us safe. He might limit what behaviors are permissible, but He ensures that day to day life will remain constant, and when you get down to it stability is what most people want. To me the whole systems always been bullshit, but it was never for me, it was built to make people like me disappear by design. No amount of talk can stop birth defects from happening, and anything that He can’t control must be swept under the rug.

“Point being, it doesn’t actually matter who handled the logistics of resource management before, because people don’t care why things actually work so long as they continue to do so. Which, by the way, they won’t anymore because _someone_ went and redirected violence upon the guy credited for everything functioning. The council doesn’t have the showmanship he did to sell disruptive changes. Yes, opening up the community for trade more than once a year will almost certainly be a good idea economically, but we don’t _like_ interlopers, they’re scary and unpredictable and can now be anywhere anywhen. The decisions the council makes won’t be popular, people won’t listen, and I’m sure eventually it will settle down as people either adjust to the new way or some cunning bastard slips their way into the power vacuum, but things are going to be hectic as hell until that happens and I want to be as far away as possible.”

 

“There is no way that you were the only one that was failed by the system.” Mizar said.

 

“Of course not. It’s hard to say how much discontent their was, “She said with a shrug. “It wasn’t exactly something you talked about and I didn’t have the opportunity to get out much besides. It was definitely there though, especially among people with stronger magic affinity. Craddock didn’t distinguish between natural inherent abilities and actual casting on his ban of the whole thing, and apparently it’s frustrating to not be able to use basic functions of your body. Not that I would know anything about that. Most people just lived with it though. Not everyone was like little Farha here daydreaming of escaping on some grand adventure.”

 

“I didn’t... “ Farha examined the tufts of grass and bushy yellow flowers breaking through the black path. “It wasn’t like I planned this… I just, couldn’t go back. With everyone staring. With everything that had happened.”

 

“Hey, I’m out here too kiddo.” Nadeau sighed. “You really don’t need to justify yourself. Hell, I just didn’t like that place, I wasn’t a serial breaker of taboo.”

 

“No one even said anything!” Farha’s good wing lashed out beside him. “I didn’t, I didn’t even DO anything this time! I was just by the pixies. I work by the pixies! Worked. I guess.”  
Farha ran his hand down one of his head feathers. “He was going to, he was actually going to, even though I hadn’t, and no one said anything! It wouldn’t have done anything and I know that but... someone could have tried. I really thought... someone would at least try.”

 

“Well, people who tend to speak up during things like that have a tendency to be next,” Nadeau stopped, and pinched her nose. “But that doesn’t excuse what happened. You didn’t deserve that. Nothing you ever did came close to justifying the way you were treated, and even if Craddock wasn’t full of shit and your earlier behavior would have been a threat to the community, what happened with your wing last time was more then enough of a consequence. And people knew it. They - we - had the power to stop what happened and we didn’t. It never should have gotten to where it did, not enough to establish the pattern and not to you, But it did. I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s not really… You couldn’t really have done much to stop it. I don’t even remember, you weren’t even in the crowd, were you?”

 

“No, but I easily could have been. I could have told Ladik to do something. He was respected in the guard, and he definitely could have stopped this instance. I could have done really anything other then shrug and pretend that this was all some inevitable and unchangeable function of society. But I didn’t.”

 

Ladik was walking behind everyone else, deeply wishing to be really anywhere else. He missed his dogs. He missed many things, things he couldn’t quite articulate, or perhaps things he wasn’t quite willing too.

 

“Well… I’m out now. That's, that's what I wanted. What matters.” He was staring intently at the road ahead. “You could have done some things different but… so could I. We didn’t. I might have wanted things to happen different but, well, they didn’t. And they certainly could have been worse. Well, for me. Probably not for the rest of the community? I mean things definitely _could_ have gone worse but, that doesn’t matter. In fact, I’m not sure I care that things are probably worse for them now? It would be nice if things could have change less, uh, dramatically, I guess? But they did also try to kill me, which is, I think, the point that I should be caring more about right now? I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say here.”

 

“That’s alright. Think I understand anyway.”

 

They walked in silence for awhile, across the golden ocean of grass that surrounded the sliver of road they traversed. Within the corners of their eyes the road’s blackness danced from the intensity of mid-day sun. It was warmer than it had been the past few weeks, hot even, the sort of hot that can only exist when time has put enough distance between it and summer that someone might forget what a truly hot day feels like.

 

Plessy was fidgety, her tail twitching, her eyes craning for detail that just wouldn’t come. Her head buzzed, filled with an invigorating static that tingled down through her limbs like an itch. She was glad the others had stopped talking. Maybe she should feel bad for how annoyed she had been getting from what was clearly an important conversation for those involved, but it had very distracting from her attempt to resolve whatever it was that was coming. Admittedly part of her frustration probably had to do with how awkward it was to be amidst people having a fairly intimate conversation about something that had nothing to do with her. It would be nice if her default reaction to not being sure how to handle a situation wasn’t to get mad at whatever was easiest to blame for it, but after 28 years of living with it she didn’t have much faith that this was something likely to change.

 

The silence wasn’t actually helping her future sight at all, but it did mean she no longer had an active irritant, which would hopefully mean she could relax a little.

 

She failed to relax. The buzzing dread that filled her only got more intense.

 

Mizar was also appreciating the silence. She had not found herself alienated by the intimacy of the conversation; her inability to feel even slightly excluded from any circumstance, no matter how much others might wish she did, remained quite strong. She simply had things to think about. Related things, to be sure, and her curiosity and interests in the previous conversation was ironically why she was appreciating its absence, as new information meant was more to process.

 

She hadn’t been personally paying attention much to her surroundings. There was nothing special about the autumn plain and she had higher priority items occupying her attention. Items that she wasn’t sure how to feel about but was determined to sort out. Even lost in thought as she was though, it was pretty hard to ignore the whole world turning grey.

 

A quick look around revealed that Alcor was still in full color, and in fact now seemed to contain colors that were slightly outside of her ability to visually parse. This, combine with how no one else seemed to notice what was, all in all, a fairly extraordinary occurrence quickly established that everything was fine. Probably.

 

She decided to ignore it.

 

Alcor flitted around her. Her colors were all wrong. And she was ignoring him. H̶o̶w̶ ̶d̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶g̶n̶o̶r̶e̶ **̶h̶i̶m̶** He just pulled her into the local mindscape and she wasn’t even bothering to ask why. He really wished he wasn’t so out of touch with how to people. There was probably some wonderfully effective and polite way of handling a situation like this. He knew it probably wasn’t the greatest idea to just pull someone into the mindscape and ask what was wrong with their colors.

 

* **Your colors are all wrong. Whats up with that?** *

 

“I duno. I assumed it was something you did.”

 

* **Something I? Oh! You mean the mindscape. No, that’s normal. For a mindscape. Which you would know if you normally resided in it. Which you don’t.** * Alcor shook his head. * **No, I meant** **_your_ ** **colors. They’re all cloudy. Which isn’t normal.** *

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

* **Okay let’s just** * Alcor took a deep breath, * **Is everything alright? You seem off.** *

 

“So if you could do this,” Mizar’s mental self projection gestured wildly at the grey surroundings, “at any time, what was the point of visiting me in my dreams last night?”

 

He could think of many things to say that were probably wrong. He had just felt like it, b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶ _w̶h̶o̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶s̶h̶e̶_ ̶t̶o̶ ̶q̶u̶e̶s̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶  because he liked her dreams, they were interesting and colorful and reminiscent enough to _her_ dreams that he could almost, _almost_ …

 

* **You didn’t really give me an opportunity last night with all the trading and socializing and whatnot. Then you fell asleep and I got board watching you.** *

 

“Right. We talked about that didn’t we? You getting bored.”

 

* **Among other things.** *

 

She was silent for a moment, focusing on walking. Alcor wasn’t entirely sure if she was aware that she wasn’t currently in control of her body or if she just didn’t care.

 

“I can’t figure out what I should have done.” Mizar said, looking back at him. “Just killing him was clearly the wrong way to handle that situation but I don’t know what I could have done differently.”

 

* **What were you actually trying to accomplish? At the time you seemed pretty focused on saving Farha without running away, which you did.** *

 

“I was trying to make sure that he couldn’t do that to anyone else. Not just save Farha but stop any more Farha’s from happening.”

 

* **Well by that metric you completely succeeded. Dead men don’t organize man-hunts.** *

 

“That isn’t what I meant!” She shouted.

 

* **It is exactly what you said though.** * He shrugged. ***How about we pretend I haven’t had a real conversation with anyone in half a millennia and completely lack the skill to infer subtext. What** **_did_ ** **you mean? What is it that you were trying to do? What do you wish the consequences of your actions had been?** *

 

“I wanted to make things better for the people living in that community.-”

 

* **For which people living in that community? Farha and Nadeau seem to think that their lives are now better.** *

 

“For all the people living there, I wanted -”

 

* **Including the one you killed? He was living there too after all.** *

 

“For the people there who were not murderous asses.” She glared at him.

 

* **And how do you draw that line?** * Alcor cocked his head, * **I highly doubt that Craddock was ever the one to actually do the job. He had people that did it for him. One of those people is currently traveling with you, should he die? Any number of people could have stopped the incident and yet did not, are they not responsible as well?** *

 

“I wanted that situation to stop, okay?” She gave up on the pretense of being in her body, spinning around in the air to look Alcor in the eyes. “Not just in the literal sense of that specific instance but the system of it, that made Ladik feel he had to participate or his sister would suffer, the system that kept people from speaking out, that resigned Nadeau to feeling like all this was unchanging and essentially inevitable, okay‽ And just killing someone and leaving was obviously not the best way of doing this but I don’t know what else I could have done!”

 

* **You wanted to drastically alter the way that a whole group of people lived their lives. There is really only two ways of doing something like that; one, you dedicate time to understanding why they live that way and convince them that the merits of your proposed alternative is greater than the amount of effort it would take to change things,** *

 

“That would take time that we don’t have,” she said.

 

* **Or two, you take advantage of the demon that’s hanging around you and ḿ̳̣̲͕̞a̩̝̝̦̦͍̣k̫e̡ ͚̜̯̗͈̟͠a͎ ̱͕̠͕̳ͅde̴͖̲̱͇a͍̹͓̣l̶̙̲͓̮.** *

 

“I’m not just going to magically force people into agreeing with me.”

 

* **Then you are going to have to accept unsatisfactory results. You need to figure out where your priorities lie - if you want to focus on finding a method of dealing with the corruption then that's all fine and good, but that means that you have to live with not solving the problems of everyone you come across.** *

 

“I understand that! I wasn’t trying to say that I think that I could have totally fixed that communities problems.“ She lashed out. “I know that takes time, I know that takes resources and I know I’m not willing to dedicate to it. I just think that I could have handled everything in a way that would have been less destructive.”

 

* **You probably could have. You have the strength that you could have forced him to back down without killing him. You could have simply taken Farha and left. You could have done lots of thing that at the very least would have retained the status quo of the community.** * He reclined in the air. * **The fate of this single community isn’t terribly important in our long game. I would say it was less a bad decision because of what did happen but what could have happened; that situation easily could have become much more violent. As things are, if you didn’t kill him, would a retained status quo have given an opportunity to leave to the people who needed it? Would anything you could have done, or been willing to do, actually have prevented an identical situation from happening the moment you left? Is the discomfort of everyone worth the freedom of the few? Is the possibility of accidental death from failing leadership that different then the possibility of intentional death at the hands of a strong leader?** *

 

“I would like to point out that we can’t actually say for sure that they won’t mob up against some random scapegoat in the future,”

 

* **I can tell you in this specific case it is highly unlikely to happen anytime soon, but do continue.** *

 

“I don’t know! Part of me wants to say that because of their complacency, because of their precipitation in that system, they deserve whatever consequences come their way, but I know that isn’t fair. They would have had to organize to change how things were done, and It looks like they had valid reasons to fear doing such a thing.” She attempted to kick a fragment of asphalt, her incorporeal foot passing through it with no effect. “I don’t know. You have all the cards, right? What do you think?”

 

* **I think that you should probably question the wisdom of asking a demon for help on the trolley problem** *

 

“What’s a trolley?”

 

* **It’s like a bus but on a track. You have to kill a large man to stop one from hitting some kids. It doesn’t matter.** * Alcor turned to the monochrome party members. * **Hold that thought, something’s happening.** *

 

Mizar’s world snapped back into color as she snapped forward from the unexpected force of her own physical momentum.

 

“Are you sure about that?” Nadeau was asking, her voice rising in pitch.

 

“If Plessy says it’s going to storm then it is going to storm, no other way about it.” Nav said, watching their partner intently.

 

“You know, when I said that I realized there was a high chance of me dying on this trip I didn’t mean _today_. Figured I’d at least get a chance of scenery first.”

 

Plessy was scrunching her face at the horizon. She should have seen this sooner. Something was off. Something was wrong. Well, storms were always wrong. Something was wronger. Wrong with the wrongness.

 

“Can she see more then that? Any idea how long we have?” Mizar asked.

 

“Coming fast. From east. Mid- sized. Something’s off…” Plessy glared at where Alcor floated. “Is this you? Obscuring things?”

 

* **Probably not no, I don’t think I’ve ever distorted someone's sight before. Not unintentionally at any rate…You can’t hear a word I’m saying can you?** * He turned to Mizar. * **Would you mind translating?** *

 

“He says no,” Mizar informed Plessy before turning back to the demon. “But shouldn’t you have seen this coming too? A storm ought to be pretty obvious for someone basically made of magic.”

 

* **No one asked.** * Alcor shrugged. * **Distant storms aren’t too obvious while I’m incorporeal and not using my powers to a significant degree, and I tend to ignore the future unless I have a reason to look into it. Do have any idea how annoying it is to have countless possible outcomes of every random action demanding your attention?** *

 

“What do you even do when a storm hits out here, anyway?” Nadeau asked. “I don’t suppose there are like, road-side shelters or something?”

 

“There is a reason most people never travel for any length of time outside of areas that they know well. Shelters do exist, but if they aren’t maintained properly it’s safer just to be out in the open.” Nav rubbed their neck. “Normally we would have more warning and it wouldn’t be a huge problem but… Our best bet is probably to stay on the road and try and get out of its path as much as we can. The road’s hardly wide enough to help that much but it’s still something.”

 

“What do the herders do?” Ladik asked.

 

“What?” Nav turned to look at him.

 

“You said earlier there were people who moved with their animals.” He said slowly. “What do they do when it storms?”

 

“Oh them.” Nav laughed. “They’ve got goats, what do they have to worry about?”

 

“There’s something else.” Plessy was staring to the northeast. “It’s like nothingness. Like a hole. Something… still.”

 

“Like an eye?” Nav asked. “Can magical storms even have eyes?”

 

“It’s distinct. Separate.” She was pushing her eyes into the palm of her hands. “I have… a good feeling about it?”

 

“Is that a good enough feeling to try to get to it? You are looking towards where the storm is coming from.”

 

“Do you have any idea what she might be talking about?” Mizar asked Alcor.

 

Alcor was following Plessy’s gaze, wearing the sort of expression you might if the door that you thought lead to the bathroom instead opened into a brightly lit roller rink full of three- foot tarantulas enthusiastically throwing a quinceañero for a chair.

 

* **But that… No** * He slowly said. * **No, I don’t know what that is. I can, however, tell you that you have notably better odds going towards it than you do trying to evade the storm altogether.** *

 

“Spirit vote is for going to the mysterious quiet spot, for whatever that’s worth.” Mizar voiced.

 

“We would have to be fast.” Plessy said.

 

“We are going to have to ditch the sled.” Nav said to Nadeau. “How fast can you go on your own? Are you going to need help?”

 

“Speed isn’t the problem as much as endurance. I can go pretty fast with the crutches, but moving for any length of time starts to hurt like hell. And as much as I will take hurting like hell over dying any day, there comes a point where I can’t keep going. Ladik is pretty good at knowing how to help, but I think the more important question is how far do you think we need to go and how fast do we need to get there?”

 

“ **I might be able to offer an easier solution.** ” Alcor said with a grin, pushing himself into the physical plane in a cloud of golden static.

 

“Holy FUCK!” Nadeau pushed herself back on the sled, launching a small bag towards the suddenly visible spirit. “What is, has it, have you been here this whole time? Is this normal out here?”

 

“ **The spirit you’ve been associating with Mizar, yes, and not really.** ” Alcor waved his hand. “ **Anyway, as I was saying, the closeness of the storm limits what I am able to safely do but something as simple as temporarily revoking some pain isn’t terribly hard at all. If you want, I could take what physical pain you would get from today and reschedule it so that you experience it at a more convenient time.** ”

 

“Is he for real?” Nadeau asked. “Is this a thing that he could do? And could, for that matter, be trusted to do?”

 

“Spirits don’t generally lie about what they will do.” Mizar said. “There can frequently be consequence that you didn’t foresee, but they are always permitted by the wording of the contract. Not that he is likely to cause any consequence too serious right now though, cause if he does we’re going to have a talk. ”   
  
“I guess if I’m already running off with a interloping redistributer of violence I might as well go the full heathen. Don’t suppose never counts as a ‘ **more convenient time** ’.” She said, failing to mimic his voice in the slightest. “And not that it matters that much objectively given the circumstances, but isn’t that going to aggravate the problem?”

 

“ **I was thinking more along the lines of tomorrow.** ” Alcor shrugged. “ **As for aggravating things, it would affect less than you might think. What’s causing your muscle issues isn’t necessarily an inherently painful condition. Most of your pain problems are because you’ve wrecked your knees with years of trying to power through it. A bit of more from what you might do today won’t be great for it, but won’t really be noticeable over the damage that’s already been done.** ”

 

“Well that would have been really nice to know a few decades ago.”

 

“ **I get that a lot.** ” He smiled. “ **So, what do you say, I take the pain that you would experience from the time you consent to this deal until you have either gotten out of the storms path, gotten to the mysterious quiet zone, or die, and hold it until after the next time you sleep, in which, upon awakening, you will experience the same amount of total pain but evenly distributed over the following 24 hour period. If death does occur the deal will end.** ”

 

“So it would hurt less but for longer.”

 

“ **We could do it differently if you want but that seemed like it was pretty favorable to me.** ”

 

“No that’s fine, I guess.” She paused for a moment. “What are you getting out of this? I’ll be the first to admit I know nothing about magic, but I was definitely getting under the impression that you generally need to give something to get something.”

 

“ **Since you asked, I absorb energy from the auras of people around me, and nothing spices up emotional energy like chronic pain.** ” He paused a moment. “ **Also holding onto intense stimuli like pain for a bit is pretty fun.** ”

 

“That’s… really weird.”

 

“ **Welcome to the wonderful world of spirits.** ”

 

“Okay so outside of being really bizarre, this all sounds like a pretty good plan, I guess? Please someone stop me if there is some blaring flaw that I am missing.” She looked around. No one said anything. Nav shrugged.  “Alright then, how do we do the thing exactly? Do I have to like, make a pain effigy or something? Ceremoniously sacrifice a squirrel? Eat a crystal?”

 

“ **As much as I would love to watch someone try any of those options, we are dealing with one of the simplest rituals you’re ever likely to encounter. All you have to do is take my hand with the intent of accepting the terms as they were given.** ” He held out a black arm, golden static dancing across it. “ **So what do you say, do we have a d͕̤̘̪e̸̹a̗̲l̷̞͙̪͈͖ͅ?** ”

 

She eyed the hand warily and reached out to take it. Just meeting it sent pins and needles rushing down her arm, and as his fingers closed around hers and blue flame encased the handshake, she could hear a buzzing in the distance and knew without a doubt that it was the storm. The fire of the handshake burned, not like fire on skin, but like a strong ginger drink on the throat. It was sharp and strong and it rushed through her, moving down her arm and filling her until she was beyond full and felt too small for her skin.

 

He took his hand back. The sound of the storm faded but the energy that filled her remained, pushing past her being.

 

It was exhilarating.

 

It was terrifying.

 

It was kinda itchy, in a slightly abstract way. She felt that no amount of external agitation could relieve the discomfort she felt, but for some reason was sure tearing off her arm would relieve the pressure. She ignored the impulse.

 

“Does it always feel like this?” She asked, wide eyes searching for understanding and her breath. “Magic, that is.”

 

“ **You shouldn’t feel anything, actually.** ” Alcor’s form kept shifting in sudden small glitches. “ **The storm tampers with magic, and I have a tendency to go a little overboard when control is inhibited. Shouldn't be any notable side effects though, been a long time since I had that little idea about what I was doing.** ” He had two mouths. He had no mouth. Narrow eyes opened as slits on the tail that blinked in and out of existence. “ **Speaking of the storm, I should really be off. I highly doubt you would want to be around when it gets to my head and makes my powers go on the fritz. S̶eé͕̱͍ ̹yo҉̯̞͕͍u̶ ̡̙o̥̬̥̪n̹͈͢ ͎͔̤̩͓͖́ͅt̟hḙ͚̭ ̨͉̱̖̘o̼̻̞t̡͉h̪̰͟e̠̤͓̬͎̺̠r ҉̪̰̟̯̫s̀ị̞͉̣̱̹̞̀d̢e͏̠̤̘** ”

 

The black of his body disappeared, leaving shifting golden static behind like lingering spots from staring at the sun.

 

“So we should be off then?” Nadeua said. “How fast are we going to have to move? The storm must be getting pretty close for him to have been effected that much, right?”

 

“We definitely should head out, but should still have a fair chunk of time before the storm hits.” Nav met Plessy’s eye, pausing to let her interject if needed. “We shouldn’t need to run - and we probably couldn’t for as long as it would take to meet the storm - just move quickly. More magical entities are just affected more strongly by storms. They can mess up spirits pretty badly, even from a distance.”

 

“So just to be clear,” Mizar said, “we are going to charge towards an approaching storm to find some mysterious clear spot that hopefully exists.”

 

“Yes.” Plessy said, sharp and quick.

 

“Does anyone have any problems with this plan?”

 

“Yes.” Plessy repeated.

 

“Good to know.” Mizar stretched her arms over her head. “Let’s do this!”

 

* * *

 

 

The grass was standing up, almost rigidly, less like a field and more like the hair of an alarmed cat. It was slightly disconcerting, and made more so as the wind picked up, pushing them through the grass it seemingly ignored, pushing them gently but firmly towards the storm.

 

A dark cloud of birds flowed through the sky against the wind. Their harsh and frantic calls filled the sky.

 

The group rushed through the tall grass. It was higher here than it had been back at the community, reaching past Farha’s low torso so only his long neck reached above. It was less obtrusive for the other, taller, members of the group but still reached past their legs and to their torsos, catching on their clothes as they passed. The stocks rose back to their original position quickly behind them, leaving no evidence they were ever disturbed.

 

The wind was picking up, building pressure towards the storm. The air was dry and filled with static. On the horizon the first hints of the storm could be seen, slight flashes of bright color that united the earth and sky.

 

It consumed the horizon, reaching across the distant sky to claw at the ground in vivid flashes. Plessy was leading towards towards an edge rather than the center, but it looked like there would still be a decent amount of storm surrounding them when it reached them.

 

It looked like there would still be a decent amount of storm surrounding them no matter what direction they went.

 

The birds were gone, taking their cloud of caws with them and leaving behind a heavy quiet. Grass shifted. Cloth rubbed on cloth. The wind whistled, more quietly than the force of it should demand. The silence was oppressive, but no one could think of something to say to break it. The situation was explaining itself just fine without commentary.

 

The plain was the whole world, the unending grassland unbroken until it hit the storm. There was nothing to be seen in the direction they were headed. Nothing but grass. The road behind them was nothing but a sliver of black, like an old scar.

 

It soon became completely obscured by the grass, not that anyone was looking back to notice.

 

The security of the path had an undeniable allure, but the growing presences of the storm made it obvious to everyone that it was far too late to try and take any sanctuary on it. Instead they looked around them, at the people they were traveling with, people who they largely knew next to nothing about. They looked ahead, searching anxiously for whatever it was that they were headed towards.

 

They didn’t see anything.

 

They kept going anyway.

 

There was no where else to go.

 

The storm was starting to get close.

 

The wind was getting fairly strong. The grass was getting affected by it now, rigidly pointing forward, bobbing rather than bending. The grasses adjacent to them leaned in towards them, no longer pushing back to their former state but lingering in reaching lines after them.

 

The air was hot.

 

Colored lights danced in the edges of their vision, painfully bright and just too far out of focus to identify which colors.

 

The air alternated between humid and dry in waves. They started subtle, lasting minutes, maybe, before the sudden shift hit. The shifts started to grow closer and closer together until they only lasted a few seconds each, the change hitting like a physical blow. Fog so heavy it pulled them down, flying against the wind in a cloud of stinging droplets. Dry fronts running into them like wall of heat.

 

It was hard to breathe.

 

The air was getting hotter.

 

The grass wasn’t just drifting towards them now, but pulling itself, reaching for them. It loosely wrapped around their legs, grabbing them. It was fairly easy to tear out of it’s weak hold, but it seemed that the holds were ever so slightly stronger with each step, and there was so very much grass.

 

They had met the storm, there was no question about that. The air smelled of ozone and paint thinner. The hush from before was replaced by a tearing sound that continuously raised in pitch.

 

There was a small fire in a perfect normal hexagon a ways to the left. It didn’t seem to care about the pulses of dampness. It also, fortunately, didn’t seem to care about spreading.

 

The grasses were was growing, fast and widely, taller than their stalks could support. They raced up and crashed down in the wind, only to have determined leaves branch off and make their own doomed breaks for the sky. Leaves tore themselves off of their stems in their vigor, taking off to wherever the wind would take them.

 

Small crystals started to form, encasing the fallen plants.

 

The grass near them was becoming a much more serious hazard. It grew around their legs. Even torn from the ground it still curled around whatever it could, as if bringing someone to the ground could unite it with the roots it had lost.

 

Moving forward at all demanded everyone’s entire attention. Which is probably why no one noticed the edge.

 

Plessy and Nadeau stumbled through it first, both able to traverse the treacherous terrain slightly easier than the others, Plessy by whipping the ensnaring grass behind her away with her long tail and Nadeau with the extra yanking power gained with her crutches. They both fell from the force of their own momentum, the sudden freedom from restraint. They were soon joined by the others, Mizar coming in last carrying Farha, who hadn’t been able to free himself on his own.

 

They were surrounded by grass. It was perfectly normal grass, doing perfectly normal grass things: namely, absolutely nothing.

 

Behind them, the storm raged. A flash of indigo instantly fossilized a large circle of grass, immortalizing its frantic attempts to grow far beyond what its cell could contain. Waves of small droplets charged towards them, only to divert themselves at the last second, reflecting off and around the air like it was a wall.

 

The storm also raged on both sides of them. The border between the storm and the calm was eerily circular, surrounding a point fairly close ahead of them where two twisting and bumpy things rose out of the grass. They were about two feet long and encrusted with crystals, tiny nobby things, in dull and opaque clusters. They might have been made from the crystals, it was hard to say.

 

“Everyone still alive?” Mizar asked, pushing herself into a sitting position.

 

“If I say no does that mean I can just lie here forever?” Nav said, glaring at the shifting sky. “Cause that sounds like the only worthwhile plan right now.”

 

The crystalline objects shot upward at their voices, revealing a person under them. They were short, slightly chubby, with tan skin and straight black hair with uneven ends that just reached the tops of their shoulders. They looked pretty human, outside of the massive crystal horns that protruded from their head.

 

“Oh!” They exclaimed. “Hi. I wasn’t really expecting to see anyone out here, what with the storm and all. I don’t normally run into anyone when there’s a storm’s happening. Not that I’m in a storm while it’s happening that often. Aw geeze, what am I saying? Are you guys okay? You don’t really look okay.”

 

They slowly headed towards the recovering group. The circle of calm moved with them.

 

“I think I speak for all of us when I say that no,” Mizar said, “no we are not okay.”

 

“You don’t,” Plessy said, “but the sentiment is shared regardless.”

 

“But our lack of okayness is pretty much inevitable given the circumstance so who cares. Far more importantly, what in the world is all this?” Mizar gestured wildly at the small sanctum of jack shit occurring.

 

They shrugged. “I don’t really know what it is, my guy. I’ve been calling it the nullfield, s’been hanging around since I was a little kid. It was a lot smaller back then though. I guess it might have always been there but just too small to notice? Maybe it started like, negative or something and attracted stuff and that’s why I grew horns. I really have no idea how magic actually works.”

 

“You’ve just had some sort of anti-corruption field around you?” Mizar asked. “For basically your whole life. And you didn’t have anything done intentionally to make it happen, it just did?”

 

“That’s the long and short of it. I think I can remember a time before I had it but my childhood memories are really unreliable, which isn’t really saying that much considering how bad my more recent memories are.” They scratched their neck. “But yeah it’s been around since basically forever. It’s been really useful, probably one of the only things that kept me alive when I was just a kid. It was really freaky back then though, cause the whole thing was much smaller so things could get a lot closer and I always thought that I would somehow mess it up and make it stop working and die. Haven’t worried about that much in some time now.”

 

“I can imagine that the area getting larger would helped the whole thing feel more stable.”

 

“Oh that too I guess.” They said.

 

“This is incredible!” Mizar smiled broadly. “Do you feel any noticeable effects from it? Like  exhaustion, or possibly excessive energy would make more sense in this case.”

 

“I’m not sure how I would notice if there were any effects, since it’s not like it ever really stops being a thing. I suppose I could try and find some sort of energy metric to compare myself to other people? That sounds pretty complicated though. And there’s probably a lot of other factors that would get in the way. You would need a lot of other people to make up for that wouldn’t you. This isn’t really what you were asking. I’m just going off rambling again while you all look like the crocodile’s leftovers. Would you guys like some tea or something?”

 

“Tea sounds wonderful.” Nadeau said.

 

There was a quick popping sound as Alcor unceremoniously blipped in, still visible to everyone.

 

“ **Oh hey you guys are still alive! That’s-** ” He stopped, staring at the clearly visible raging storm, and he slowly turned to the horned person. “ **What the fuck, Henry?** ”

 

“It’s Fred, actually.” Fred said. “Oh we haven’t actually done introductions at all have we? I’m Fred, she/her, or whatever really.”

 

Fred started getting the tea ready as everyone introduced themselves. Instead of making a fire she pulled out a covered pot that, she explained, stored sunlight to boil water. The leaves she used were fragrant, their strong scent lingering through the heavy wind. Downwind, in the storm, a deep orange trail flowed away from them.

 

“So what were you guys doing out here anyway?” Fred asked. “Don’t normally see people out in the planes much.”

 

“Tempting fate, apparently.” Nadeau rubbed her hot cup along her thin legs, which were tightly curled beneath her. “What about you, just here because you can?”

 

“Not exactly,” she said. “It snuck up on me like mold to bread. I mostly travel alone see, and don’t really have anyway of gauging when a storm is actually likely to happen. I’d probably avoid them if I could, the wind can get nasty and the nullfield won’t help against physical hazard if a real fire starts or something. But still, they are awfully beautiful aren’t they? In their own terrible way.”

 

“It really is.” Mizar said. “Never seen one up close before.”

 

“Should we be worried… Is a fire likely to happen? Do you think?” Farha asked. “I know that, when we were moving through it just now, there was a small fire. Even if it wasn’t moving, that’s concerning, isn’t it?”

 

“Probably not a huge concern with how wet it’s been. I wouldn’t imagine it’s likely to maintain itself without the storm.” Nadeau said. “My question is what’s the storm even doing here? We just had one a year back, and that one was pretty sizable. It could be a coincidence, but I haven’t heard of two storms being that close in generations.”

 

“Plessy and I have been noticing an uptick in corruptions, and right before we met Mizar we ran into the biggest one I’ve ever seen in my life. We were thinking that there might be a manifestation. Part of why we’re headed out of the area really, there’s a fine line between stormwalking and suicide.”

 

“A manifestation of what?” Nadeau asked.

 

“You guys don’t even know about manifestations? You really were cut off from everything.” Nav said. “Basically magic is everywhere, but the force that causes it to corrupt is focused in a number of chaotic epicenters that it spreads from. The closer you are to one of these the more corruptions you see, the more likely you are to get larger and more numerous storms. They drift slowly, but since they’re inherently magical they move through spaces that are magically connected rather than physically. Most of the time this isn’t noticeable, since physical connection generally leads to strong magic connection, but sometimes you get a large, almost unpredictable jump, and the epicenter starts to manifest someplace physically far away from where it just was.”

 

“Oh gods above of course that would happen now.” Nadeau laughed. “The Divine is slain and suddenly everything starts getting corrupted? That’s going to validate everything he ever said. Everything’s going to descend to hell so quickly. You know they’re going to blame you, right?”

 

“Yeah, probably.” Mizar said. She was staring out into the storm. It really was beautiful, in the wild and violent way the natural world so often was. Beautiful like a fresh carcass spilling it’s rapidly cooling blood into the snow. Beautiful like a starry night lit up by a forest fire consuming a close valley, or the ethereal gliding of a swarm of jellyfish, mindless and hungry.

 

Despite herself, she really wanted to reach out, to touch it, to join it again.

 

Mizar shivered, despite the warmth of the afternoon air. Wetness from the storm clung to her, demanding precious heat in exchange for the favor of it’s passing.

 

A pulsing, persistent pain throbbed through her almost rhythmically, like she was a rock battered by the tide. There was beauty in that too, in the pain, in the cold, in the indisputable reminder of her own survival. It demanded her attention, and on a strange level she felt more real then she had in years. There’s beauty in that too, the simple act of paying attention to what was already there.

 

She knew she should have been more careful. She shouldn’t have counted on Alcor to notify her if a storm was coming, at least not without requesting it of him. She shouldn’t have assumed that Plessy’s vision would give them enough time. She should have kept up with her previous habits, measuring and recording all the little signs that could lead up to this.

 

But then again, if she had, they would not have found this place, this person, this Fred.

 

And this was amazing. Fred was amazing, not only for the utterly impossible field that radiated out from her but for how she acted. She could have pretty much anything she wanted easily, people will do so much for safety, and yet here she was, just having tea with whoever tripped over her.

 

Mostly Mizar was impressed with how utterly normalized Fred was to her own circumstance. It was one thing to be used to something that was part of your life and another to treat it as utterly insignificant when that was clearly and undeniably not the case. Then again, if she mostly traveled alone it was possible she didn’t quite realize how much others lacked this sort of safety net.

 

Mostly though, if she was being honest with herself, she was impressed with the Nullfield. It was impossible. Impossible didn’t even begin to describe exactly how unheard of, how unimagined, how frankly absurd such a thing was. There was no obvious mechanism. There was no obvious place for the energy to go, outside of the horns, perhaps, but that would be nowhere near enough. There was no obvious anything on how this could happen, or what it even was.

 

But it undeniably was. The storm was whipping past them like fish around a shark. And Fred had said that it had grown, might still be growing. It wasn’t some strange static effect, but a living system. Something that could, perhaps, be encouraged to grow more. Something that, perhaps, could be replicated, or neutered at a specific location, or any number of other things. If it could grow it could be changed, and there was really no way of knowing how much for now.

 

She was partially frustrated that such a huge finding was discovered completely out of dumb luck, but her pure excitement over it mostly overshone such emotions.

 

Mostly.

 

“Where you headed, Fred?” Mizar asked, leaning forward towards the horned girl.

 

“Oh, I wasn’t really headed anywhere specific. I just kinda wander, you know? Listen to my legs. They know what they are doing, been carrying me for years and almost never mess up. Never have problems when they do mess up either. Just, get right back up and keep moving. Could learn a lot from my legs.” She looked Mizar up and down. “Hey I have a question.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“How do you get your clothes to stay up like that?” She asked. “I can’t even get shoulder straps to stay in place.”

 

“Oh it’s easy! You just gotta glue it down.” Mizar said. “This stuff ain’t going nowhere.”

 

“That sounds really uncomfortable.”

 

Mizar laughed. “Oh, incredibly so. Itchy as hell.”

 

* **So…** * Alcor eased towards Mizar and into incorporeality. * **She seems nice** *

 

“If you’re not headed anywhere specific would you mind traveling with us for a little?” Nadeau asked. “The three of us are trying to find a new community, Nav says there should be something reasonably close, and I’m really not sure how I feel about just heading out back there again. I realize that we just met though, and that some of us are really weird.”

 

“I think I would like that. It’s been awhile since I was traveling with anyone else.” Fred said. “And seeing how I’m hardly the cow’s cud myself, doesn’t really seem right to complain about anyone else being weird.”

 

* **And would you look at that? Seems like she’s going to be hanging around for awhile too…** *

 

“And while we’re on the topic of traveling,” Nadeau said, “do we think we can still salvage that sled? I’m really not going to be up to trying to walk at you guy’s’ pace for a bit. And that’s just based how how I feel now, not even counting the pain karma or whatever that is going to kick in tomorrow...” Nadeau scrunched her brow. “Oh _gods_ tomorrow is going to suck.”

 

* **Lots of time for you two to get to know each other.** *

 

“The sled will probably be alright enough,” Nav said. “Isn’t the first time it’s been abandoned in a storm, although admittedly I’ve never been there when it’s happened. It’s magic enough that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near it while the storm is happening, but even if it actually gets significantly corrupted it’s a large plank that has a max speed of a brisk walk. I would be slightly nervous about going after it myself, but from what I’ve seen I’m pretty confident that Mizar would have absolutely no problem subduing even the most aggressive board.”

 

“Oh yeah.” Mizar grinned. “That thing’s going down. It’ll never know what hit it.”

 

* **Might find something you like.** *

 

Mizar glared at Alcor. “What is your problem?”

 

“Is something wrong?” Fred asked.

 

“Nah, it’s just the spirit I commune with is being _really damn weird_ and needs to calm the fuck down is all.”

 

* **Look all I’m saying is, as your spirit guide, I think that maybe you two should get to know each other more. It’ll be a good move politically.** *

 

“You commune with a spirit? That’d be the floaty guy who disappeared then?”

 

“Yep.” Mizar said, “That’s the one. He’s normally pretty cool but sometimes he _needs to stop_.”

 

“That’s pretty cool, at least the spirit part. The needing to stop thing obviously less so. I’ve never actually seen one before, Didn’t even know they could be visible.”

 

“Well they normally can’t, but if you-”

 

“Oiy! Shoo!” Nadeau shouted.

 

There was a large crow perched on the water kettle, staring at her.

 

“I think it’s just taking shelter from the storm, same as us.” Nav said. “No need to drive it away.”

 

“Its part of the Unkindness.” Nadeau said. “They’re thieves the lot of them, it could take anything!”

 

“They really aren’t that bad.”

 

“I saw some take a whole cow once!”

 

“Maybe you just didn’t appreciate it enough.” Nav said with a shrug.

 

“Excuse me?”  Nadeau asked incredulously. “Didn’t appreciate… Why would you possibly defend them? They are, at best, a nuisance.”

 

“They can be pretty frustrating, but it’s not like they take anything wanted unless it’s freely given. And sometimes they’re the only ones who will take something you really need gone.” Nav said. “Anyway, it’s generally not a good idea to be too unkind to anything sentient, you never know how gravely the offence will be taken or what sort of enemies you could make. Also it’s rude.”

 

“They took a cow. A living cow. Almost a ton of animal. She wasn’t unwanted, and we sure weren’t giving her up.”

 

“They’re crows.” Nav said with a shrug. “Why would you expect them to respect our ideas about the ownership of other animals?”

 

“How did that…” Farha said “I remember hearing about it, but how did, I mean, the crows, they’re small. How did they fly with a cow?”

 

“This whole mass of them came out of nowhere swarming it and when the birds dissipated the cow was gone.” Nadeau said. “I don’t know how, magic probably.”

 

“I’ve always liked the Unkindness.” Fred said. “When I was a kid I discovered that if you catch them in the right mood they’ll play with you. It’s probably just the Nullfield but they’ve always seemed to like me.”

 

“Okay I can understand not deliberately aggravating the crows,” Nadeau said, “but are people here really so relaxed that they just let their kids play with the damned thieves? That really seems like a great way to lose the kid forever.”

 

“My parents weren’t really around by that point.” Fred said. “Or at least, I wasn’t really around them. I got no clue what they thought about the Unkindness.”

 

“I mean, whatever guardian.” Nadeau waved her hand. “Unless you guys only count direct parental guardianship out here?”

 

“I didn’t really have a guardian growing up is the thing. The horns formed before the Nullfield was noticeable, and I guess the word down the path was that I was probably an omen of death? It’s been awhile, can’t say I remember too well the specifics.” She shrugged. “I think when I first started really interacting with the Unkindness I may have been being watched by a dryad? She was nice, even if she was pretty far on the tree end of things. She never did quite get how I could need both food and air.”

 

“Wait, how old were you when this happened? I can’t imagine that a child would last at all out here at all.”

 

Fred shrugged. “I’m not really sure. Like I said, my memory’s hardly a fresh banana on Sunday. Don’t think I could’ve been that young though, cause I do still remember my parents, and I’m pretty sure that even people who have memories that manage doing normal memory stuff still don’t know anything from when they were just minnows in the pond, you know? It probably helped with the whole surviving thing that I was by the coast back then too. People tend to group up more over there, and they were generally content to help me out for a bit so long as I left before the crystals got to my brain or what have you. “

 

“That’s ridiculous!” Nadeau exclaimed. “How are you even alive right now? It isn’t like storms are the only dangerous thing in the world.”

 

Mizar leaned back as Fred started to answer, letting the tall prairie grass envelope her. It felt good to lie down, to have the soft grass support her aching muscles, to get a bit more protection from the harsh winds. She let the conversation become lost in the muffling grass and her own inattention.

 

Strange colors danced in the sky at the Nullfield’s edge.

 

“Hey Alcor,” she said.

 

* **Yeah?** * He drifted over her, blocking out the shifting sky.

 

“That thing you were doing before the storm, could you do that again?”

 

 ***What, pulling you into the mindscape?*** Alcor asked. ***Easily. You got something you want to talk about?** *

 

“Damn straight I do,” she said as the color drained from the world. “When you first poofed back here you recognized Fred immediately.”

 

* **First of all, I don’t poof in, it’s called tessering.** * He rolled onto his back, head hanging down to look at her. * **And I have some history with her soul. We both do, actually.** *

 

Mizar let her mental projection float out of her body.

 

“Is that why you were being so weird?” She shook her head. “Whatever. Whatever! Who cares about that? What is all this? How could one person possibly be generating something like the Nullfield?”

 

* **You’re not going to be thrilled to hear it, but it isn’t anything replicable.** *

 

“How can you be so sure about that? It happened once, didn’t it?”

 

* **Lot’s of things only ever happen once, and trust me when I say that’s a very good thing.** * He stretched the whole of his body. * **And I’m confident about this specifically being a unique phenomenon because, as I said, I have a history with this soul, and this is a pretty logical consequence to something that happened to him many preincarnation ago. Still pretty surprising mind you, but it does make sense.** *

 

“So what happened?” She asked. “Even if whatever it was specifically isn’t replicable that doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from it.”

 

* **I went overboard trying to lend out some of my power. It really should have been fatal, but somehow his soul managed to permanently alter itself in a way that safely channeled the excess energy into an alternate form of sorts. Since then all incarnations have had horns, although normally they’re incorporeal.** * Alcor shifted to a sitting position. * **Gotta admit though, now I’m pretty curious about what would have happened if she had reincarnated back on Earth earlier, when there was more energy everywhere.** *

 

“Is there a different planet people can reincarnate on?”

 

* **Quite a few other planets. The moon too, I suppose, but their population is still pretty small. Since the calamity went and destroyed the Earth’s population, it’s actually more likely for someone to reincarnate off planet.**

 

“There are people living on the moon?” She asked, eyes wide. “That’s really cool.”

 

* **I think they would think it’s pretty cool to learn that there are still people living on Earth, too.** *

 

“We gotta make sure we find some way to contact the moon once we go and fix everything up.” She cracked her knuckles. “Anyway! That’s way in the future and a problem for later. You already did something to cause a Nullfield once, right? What’s to say you can’t do it again?”

 

* **What part of ‘random permanent soul altercation as a result of a deadly surge of energy’ makes you think that this is something that could ever be repeated?** *

 

“So you’re going to be boring about this, huh?”

 

* **This is not being boring! This is rudimentary safety, I’m being responsible.** *

 

“More like boresponsible,” She said, smiling widely.

 

* **Weren’t you the one saying you were going to utilize a slow and practical solution because it’s “** most plausible way to actually succeed **”?** *

 

“There is a huge difference between this and like, mind controlling half the world’s population or whatever it was you were proposing.”

 

* **You’re right, mind controlling half the world’s population isn’t practically guaranteed to kill you.** *

 

“Who ever said I was asking to you to do this to _me_?”

 

* **Whatever happened to your whole ethical… thing?** *

 

“Who ever said anything about doing it to people?” She clapped her hands together. “Even assuming that we could find a way to reliably replicate this, there aren’t really enough of us to properly heal the land. Just hypothetically here, imagine we could do it to something way more common than people, like rats, or spiders. Or hey I was reading that the ancients found that there are these tiny micro bugs that are what make people sick and apparently they’re absolutely everywhere…”

 

* **Okay, first of all, you clearly don’t understand the scale of what you are asking for.** * Alcor pinched the bridge of his nose. * **Replicating this arbitrarily large numbers of times would be far, far more expensive then you would ever be able to afford. Second, although souls are highly complicated, what a soul can do while incarnated is limited by the incarnation’s form. Rats, bugs, and microbes do not have anywhere near the cognitive function to generate a magical effect of this magnitude. You could only do this on a person, albeit using a slightly wider definition of person than you might be using. Third of all, random response to a highly chaotic event. Completely unprecedented. Permanent souler alteration. This is not something that you would** ** _want_** **to be replicated arbitrarily many times.** *

 

“Okay fine, you old bore.” She said, “we’ll go at this a different route. You mentioned something about energy being channeled to an alternate form? What’s her deal? How does she withstand a storm’s worth on energy being channeled into her?”

 

* **They need a fair amount of energy to simply exist. They have a corporeal body, but it’s animated entirely by magic, which takes a lot of energy on its own. In the past they would have short bursts of high activity between long stretches of hibernation or slow wandering while absorbing the relatively small amounts of energy the environment had back then. I would guess that they’ve mostly compensated for the extra energy by becoming more active? It’s hard for me to say without encountering them again, and whenever I think I’ve actually figured out how they work they have an infuriating tendency to do something completely out of left field that makes no sense.** *

 

“Okay, so here’s what we're gonna do-”

 

* **No** * Alcor interrupted. * **No matter how much you want me to, I can’t just…  make more Woodsmen. Ever. I didn’t even make the first one, that was something Henry’s soul just did on it’s own. Fred’s soul. Whatever. What happened with Fred’s soul would be hard to replicate and what Fred’s soul did as a response definitely isn’t replicable. I get that this is exciting for you but ultimately you can’t exploit it in the way you want.** *

 

“That’s what you think.” She said. “Just cause you gave up trying to understand your bullshit doesn’t mean it can’t be done. I’m going to figure the fuck out of this, just you wait.”

 

* **Good luck with that.** *

 

She narrowed her eyes, “Just. You. Wait.” She said, descending back into her own body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, finally got to Fred. Her intro was one of the scenes that I had envisioned most strongly when I started writing this mess, and it ended up very, very different then originally planned.  
> We are now exiting the parts of the story that has strong ties to the original modtalk that started this all, and I'm really excited for the upcoming chapters. I hope yall like werewolves.
> 
> If anyone has problems with how I portrayed Nadeau please let me know. I'm pretty much as far away from having mobility problems as it's possible to be.
> 
>  
> 
> Fun fact: I actually know someone trying to give themself argyria by drinking concentrated colloidal silver. I don't think I could have made that one up on my own.


	5. Chapter 5

The post-storm plane was a strange place. Fallen grass stocks were strewn about like bodies on a battlefield; long enough had passed that the majority of the grasses could no longer deny the reality of their own death.

Things were still. The wind was calm. The humidity had evened out to something fairly reasonable. 

Despite the stillness it was impossible to miss the storm’s absence. The scattered plants were intermingled with the frozen stone replicas of their former brethren. Small amounts of ash drifted through the air from an unidentifiable source. A fine layer of crystal covered the ground, cracking and crunching when disturbed. 

Plessy led Nav and Mizar with a modified compass. A few flakes of rust on the needle tip would ensure that it would always point to the sled. At least, it would under normal conditions. It was currently being difficult, skittering away from whatever direction it had been facing whenever it seemed to get a fix. Plessy was leading about as much by memory as she was with the device. 

“So…” Nav said, as they passed a strange mound of crystals and greenery that smelled disturbingly meaty. “Fred. She’s got to be the Stormwaker, right?”

“What?” Mizar exclaimed. “No way. There is no way that they’re real.”

“Are you sure about that?” Nav put a hand on their hip. “Cause I have it on the great authority of a friend of a cousin's sibling-in-law that they’re definitely real.”

“Isn’t the Stormwalker supposed to be like, a twenty-foot-tall Dryad?” Mizar crossed her arms.

“I don’t think so; the Stormwalker’s definitely supposed to have horns.”

“There are horned dryads,” Mizar said, carefully walking around a pile of sharp petrified grass. “I’ve met a few. They’re great!”

“You’ve met multiple dryads?” Nav stared at her disbelievingly. “Multiple strange dryads to boot?”

“Well,” Mizar shrugged, “they do tend to live in groves, so If you run into one there are likely more around.”

“Plant things aside, Fred’s gotta be at least part of the origin of storm-parter legend.” Nav spread her arms apart. “It’s too big of a coincidence.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, feet crunching on the crystal covered ground.

“So,” Nav said, “do you think she knows?”

Plessy shook her head, smiling. “She has no idea.” 

“Should we tell her?” Mizar asked.

“What, just go up to here and ask if she knows there are folk songs written about her?” Nav laughed. 

“Ma'am, excuse me ma’am,” Mizar said quickly, “are you aware that you’re actually a massive dryad?”

“I can’t believe I met the Stormwalker and she’s shorter then I am,” Nav said.

“Her horns are pretty long.” Mizar pulled on a piece of bright orange ex-grass as she passed it, stretching it for almost a foot before it snapped. “I bet things started with describing her as having huge horns, and then she grew with the tale.”

“I’ll buy that.”

“So,” Mizar flipped her palms over, “what do you think’s the deal with the hand thing?”

“There’s a hand thing?” Nav asked.

You haven’t heard the hand thing?” Mizar leaned towards Nav. “There’s supposed to be like a bunch of hands that follow the Stormwalker around.”

“Follow her?” Nav scrunched their face. “As in they exist near her but are unconnected? Just wrists for days, stretching off into the void?”

“I think they’re supposed to be cut off at the wrists?” She frowned slightly. “I was never really clear on that.”

Nav crossed their arms. “That sounds incredibly fake.”

Mizar laughed. “Everything about her seems fake! Excuse me for not bothering to rank how likely each part of the ‘Massive horned parter of storms’ myth was.”

“Is that the sled?” Plessy asked.

A massive mound blocked the path ahead of them. It was easily twenty feet of mostly dirt, which presumably came from the moat-like pit that encircled it. Interspersed with the dirt was torn grass, small crystals, and the occasional limb of an unidentifiable animal. The pit was filled with a suspicious clear liquid whose fumes stung their noises and made their eyes water, even from the distance that separated it from them. The sled was stuck in the mound about two thirds down, underside strobing bright blue lights of distress. The front of it had been entirely subsumed by the mound, hard packed earth slightly cracked around its pathetic twitches. 

Outside of some mild crystallization around its ancient control panel, the sled looked to be in pretty good shape. Or at least in comparable shape to before. It would, admittedly, be a pretty significant feat for the old machine to manage to get into a significantly worse condition without being cleaved in two.

Its useless twitching became frantic at their approach. 

Mizar pulled her staff out of her belt pouch.

“Overkill much?” Plessy said.

“You know it! Or at least, you know it would be if I was gonna smash it. This staff’s absurdly enchanted - it wasn’t even a staff when I got it. The thing just became one because it’s what I wanted. It can absorb magic from other things, which is part of how it’s so damn effective against corruptions. Not that unlike Fred actually, just a smaller scale…”

*Nope. It has over a thousand years of enchantments on it and it’s much too small an area of effect for your purposes. Wouldn’t be able to make another one in your lifetime, either.*

She narrowed her eyes and glowered at him. “Anyway. Should be absolutely no problem to subdue the shit outta that cocky old board.”

Mizar took a few steps back and charged the moat, slamming her staff into the noxious liquid to pole vault over. With a firm yank she freed her weapon and, like a monarch conferring knighthood, bopped both of the sled’s sides with the star-shaped tip.

The sled went still.

Mizar eyed the mass of dirt that bound it to the mound and set to work freeing it. It was pretty firmly stuck, but with bit of work and some staff prying it slid out. 

“So how do you work this thing, anyway?” She asked. “It’s a little bit big to throw back over.”

“On the left side there’s the control panel,” Nav shouted back.

“You mean this grid of identical and unlabeled buttons?”

“That’s the one,” Nav said. “The top left one will turn it on. After that there’s a sequence of three buttons you want to press, the first one twice -”

The sled roared to life and shot backwards, its bottom blazing bright green. Mizar barely managed to grab onto it before it raced over the moat, absconding with the priestess from its owners. 

“THE POWER BUTTON,” Nav shouted. “YOU NEED TO PRESS THE - she can’t hear me anymore, can she?”

//I’m sure it will be fine. The sled is very durable.\\\ Plessy was grinning. //I must say I’m impressed though, I didn’t even know it could go that fast.\\\

“I know, right? What did she even do? Just, nyoomed outta town.” Nav stared after where the sled had gone. “So we should probably go after that, huh?”

//I suppose.\\\

Mizar had managed to turn the sled off again fairly quickly, so catching up wasn’t much of a challenge. From there it was little effort to return it to its normal settings and go back to the others. And then they moved on. 

The storm-wrecked field was still now, and full of strange monuments to the storm’s presence. The area was almost entirely dead, but the plants that had survived were enlarged, thriving, and in some cases eerily animalistic. A swarm of flies, flying in eerie synchronization, moved past. A few of the unnaturally large ones carryed those who hadn't fared the storm so well. The wreckage covered everything in view, like the whole world had been irreversibly altered in the process of a few hours. 

And yet they passed through it quickly enough. Grass, normal golden stalks swaying in the wind, started sporadically appearing along the path again. Soon it was all the horizon contained, the storm’s path not even a dark blotch behind them. Birds returned to fill the air with chirps and caws, screaming out in greeting and warning. The taste of smoke on the air was replaced with that of the late flowers and the slight decay of autumn. 

The seemingly endless grass became peppered with small trees. The distant mountains were starting to loom. 

On one side of the road the grasses and undergrowth sharply cut off, replaced by a field of tall orange flowers. There was no currently tending the field, and no other clear signs of a settlement, but the small, dense grove of trees obscuring the road ahead could easily be blocking a town from view as well.

Barking could be heard from ahead. Most were high pitched and in quick succession from one another.

The trees all looked to be the same species and were crowned in colors. They carpeted the ground in their red and gold. Ivy with soft pink blooms clung to bark and hung down from branches. Clusters of deep purple bushes bunched against the trees, hiding shiny red berries beneath their leaves. Iridescent bees bumbled from flower to flower. They weren’t very large for bees, only a bit over an inch long.

A large puppy, about knee height, tumbled through the trees into the path in front of them, watching a bee closely. They could hear more barking in the woods behind it. Slowly the pup turned towards them, and jumped up when they caught its eye before running in a small circle yapping.

Nav stopped, gesturing at the others to stop as well. 

“Isn’t that a wolf?” they asked.

“No.” Plessy answered. “They-”

Before she could finish her thought a massive wolf barreled through the undergrowth, sliding between them at the puppy. It was grey, mostly, with patches of red-brown. It wasn’t growling, but it was hunched over the pup in a very protective manner, eyeing them cautiously.

“Hello.” Mizar held her palms out passively. “We mean no harm to you or your child. We were simply following the path. May we pass?”

The wolf crouched low and growled, taking a step forward. Most of the party took a step back. Mizar reached into one of her pouches, whipped out her staff and held her ground.

The wolf started to grow, but unevenly. Its front grew out and larger and its stomach bulged out and segmented itself, becoming a brighter orange and shiny. The front legs had moved upwards as the front grew, and the rear legs were now shooting forward, leaving the creature supported by its weird stomach bulge, which finished splitting into two rows of fleshy prolegs. An extra set of legs had sprouted somewhere along the line, and rested between the other two pairs. 

The whole thing took less than a minute, but it was an extremely gross and uncomfortable less than a minute.

The werewolf started laughing. With their larvaesque rear, ridged carapace, tiny vestigial wings and dual tails they could now be identified as a goblin, even if their midform was covered in fur and had a wolf head. 

“Oh man, you should have seen the looks on your faces! Ya’ll really thought I was going to-” He turned to Mizar. “You’re terrifying, by the way.”

“A girl does her best.”

“I’m Swift.” He smiled. “He/him. And seriously though, it’s a good thing you ran into me first - there’s some nasty characters in these woods.”

“Really?” Fred asked.

“Oh yeah. The woods mauler. He’s this HUGE wolf who roams about, wears a coat made of the skins of everyone that he’s offed. They say that his skins hide him from anyone who shares their species. And he’s not the only one, there's also-”

“No there’s not,” said someone coming from the trees behind the goblin. They looked human, although were quite short, barely breaking four feet. Their proportions matched up with that of an adult human, not those of a dwarf. They had olive skin and wore purple robes accented in gold. “I don’t know what he was telling you but he was almost certainly lying.”

“What?” said Swift in a mockery of offense. “I would never lie about something as horrid as the Stillgrove Thrasher.”

“There is no stillgrove thrasher. Please stop trying to scare travelers.”

“Outright denial, eh?” Swift put his paws together. “That sounds exactly like something the Thrasher would say.”

“I hate you.”

The goblin dramatically gasped, covering their heart with a paw. “Such lies! And in front of children no less. I was so wrong, the Thresher would never stoop to such lows.”

A fit of giggles exploded from the pup in the road, who was lying on their back in a humanoid form.

“Hey kiddo,” Swift nudged the youngster with his foot, “what have we said about being bipedal without pants?”

“But you’re not wearing pant…”

“And I’m not bipedal. You know the rules. Less legs, more covers. You go from four legs to two legs you gotta wear pants. If you go to zero we put’cha in the sac. You go to fourteen and well…” He looked away from the kid towards the person he had been arguing with earlier. “Then you ask your bestest sister in the whole world if she brought your skirt because it’s actually pretty cold and you weren’t planning on needing vocal cords while on this outing.”

“You know one day I’m not just going to plan ahead for you without you asking me to,” she said, pulling out a large piece of cloth from her pack.

“Sure you will, Lorny dearest. Because you love me, and are the greatest sister in the world, and if you don’t I’ll just embarrass you even more.”

“Please never call me ‘Lorny’ again.” Lorn turned to newcomers. “You’ll have to excuse my brother, he’s-”

She stopped, staring at Mizar. At her staff. 

“Swift, what were you doing?”

“Um.” Swift looked from Mizar to Lorn. “Is this some kinda trick question?”

“I’m…” Lorn was looking around quickly. “I’m going to go get the Bright One.”

“What’s so important that you need to get Malissa involved?”

“You would know if you would ever paid attention!” She shook her head. “And I realize the concept is foreign to you, but please try to be polite in the meantime.” 

Growing wolfier by the second, Lorn dashed off into the woods.

Swift stared after her for a moment, before turning around. 

“You’ll have to excuse my sister, she just… does this sometimes. Gets it in her head that something Matters and nothing can stop her.” He shrugged. “It’s probably nothing.”

“Who’s the Bright One?” Mizar asked.

“It’s a title, passed on to whoever has the strongest affinity for the beelessed instrument. She’s a pretty big figure in our pack, I guess,” Swift said. “She communes. Mostly with bees.”

“You can talk to bees?” Fred asked. “‘You’ in the general sense, that is. I wouldn’t think from that sentence that, personally, could talk to bees, although it would be pretty neat if you could.”

“Anyone can talk to bees. The hard part is getting the bees to understand what you are trying to say,” Swift said. “And it’s only sort of talking. We have a magical instrument that can be used to get basic ideas across. We’ve been using it for generations to live closely with them.”

“So if you’re using an instrument,” Fred said, “wouldn’t that mean that they can’t talk back?”

“Bees generally only really want to be able to tell other species to back off and are pretty good at doing this without any help.”

“You live closely with bees? Aren’t you worried about the kids?” Nadeau said.

“Not really.” Swift shrugged. “That’s the whole point of the instrument. Bees are only so aggressive because they don’t know our intentions and are trying to protect their hives. We can let them know that we don’t mean them any harm and they let us be as a result. We’ve also been breeding them for a while, so they’re a lot less aggressive than normal bees.”

“And the bees just trust whatever you tell them?” Nadeau asked.

“It wouldn’t be much of a spirit forged magical instrument if the bees didn’t believe it, now would it?” Swift put his middle paws on this hips. “Anyway, I don’t think bees really have a concept of lying. With most of what they use their communication skills for, any lie would be pretty quickly exposed and just waste everyone’s time. And bees are pretty intelligent but I don’t think they are quite smart enough to appreciate a good prank.”

“Considering the aforementioned lack of communication methods, that’s probably for the best,” Nav said. “I have trouble picturing bee pranks that aren’t ‘hey, let’s go sting that guy, it’ll be hilarious’.”

“I was thinking about pranks bees would play on each other. ‘Cause again, they don’t really interact with others outside of telling them to buzz off.” Swift tilted his head to the sky. “So like, one could tell the others she found some great flowers, just the perfect blooms, and when everyone goes to get them it turns out there’s just a bunch of rocks or something.”

“That seems kinda cruel.” Fred said. “I don’t think that bees would do that to each other, even if they could grasp the idea of it conceptually. I like to think that bees are full of love.”

Nadeau took a hard look at Fred. “Bees kill people.”

“Well, yeah but like Swift said, they don’t know what we are. We’re just huge lumbering things that crush their hives with our huge lumbering feet. But bees live in very close contact with each other, and I would hope that anyone living in that close of quarters really loves those they’re with, and I don’t see pranks fitting into that very well.”

“I don’t see what love has to do with not pranking.” Swift crossed his upper arms. “Maybe that wasn’t the best example in the world, but pranks don’t have to come from a place of malice. They’re just a way to have some harmless fun, and sometimes try and get someone to relax and stop treating everything like it’s of absolute importance. Not that that always works, but what can you do.”

“Who gets to say what exactly counts as harmless?” Nadeau asked.

“I mean, you gotta gauge your audience. One man's laugh is another's panic attack, and that’s no fun for anyone involved. It’s an art, and like any art it takes practice and sometimes you make a mess of things and you just gotta apologize and clean up after yourself.”

The sound of footsteps came from where Lorn had dashed off to. 

Still in wolf form, she dashed back, followed by another goblin. There was no question that she was the bright one. She carried herself with exquisite posture, seeming to glide rather than walk over the ground. She had similar coloration patterns to the less wolfy parts of Swift, but she was darker and had light green spots scattered across her body, like freckles, that glowed softly in the low light of the woods. She was adorned in dark silks patterned like the night sky with golden stars. The light fabric flowed around her in the light breeze. 

She looked Mizar over. 

“I can see why Lorn requested my presence,” she said. “It would seem that we have an ally in common.”

“Hey, Dog Star.” Alcor popped into the physical plane. “Fancy running into you here, in this place that you live.”

“And hello to you as well, Star Cloaked One.” The Bright One bowed her head. “What brings you to our humble woods?”

“You should probably ask them that; I’m just along for the ride. It’s nice to see you again though.” He drifted closer. “The kids are looking well.”

“It is always an honor to be graced with your presence. The times have not been kind, but we have been blessed with good health.” She turned to Mizar. “You must forgive me, for it seems I have been ignoring you. I am Melissa Rex, Bright One of the Pack of Even Hands. Might I have your name?”

“I am Mizar, High Priestess of Alcor. My companions and I are simple travelers, passing through.”

“It seems you sell yourself short.” The Bright One smiled. “It strikes one as unlikely that travels with the Light in the Darkness could be described with such a word as ‘simple’.”

“There is certainly truth to your words,” Mizar conceded. “My goals are lofty and my ambition high, but I still have a long journey before I can achieve what it is I seek. In the meantime, I strive to do what I can along the way. These three are seeking a new place to spread their roots, and I am to make sure that they find it.”

The Bright one cupped her hands together. “If you would have it, I gladly offer to you the hospitality of the Pack of Even Hands.” 

“Nothing could please me more than to accept. Our path has been a harsh one.”

The bright one led everyone down a well worn path through the woods. The prints of many species cut deeply into the moist soil. There were a disproportionate number of paw prints, but also humanoid, avian, equestrian, goblin, and the long treads of the legless. The tracks came in a wide array of sizes, and from the gaggle of children around them it wasn’t hard to guess why.

Mizar fell back and started talking quietly with Swift.

“So just to be clear, not everyone talks like that here, right?” she whispered.

“Nah,” he said. “Mum’s just weird.”

“She isn’t being weird!” Lorn interjected. “It makes perfect sense to default to more respectful language when dealing with a large number of unknowns. Part of her job is to maintain our relation with the Star Cloaked One, so it stands to reason that she is going to make an effort to not offend someone who bares his symbol.”

“It’s ‘cause Mum’s weird.”

*It’s ‘cause they love me.* Alcor floated incorporeal behind Mizar. *It turns out that actually honoring deals even when you aren’t magically bound to is a great way to get a dedicated following; other demons are dumb.* 

“Well as long as I’m not expected to keep talking like that. I hate having to think before I say things!”

“You’re really going to leave that out in the open?” Plessy asked.

Mizar shrugged. “I’m comfortable with who I am.”

“I’ve never really understood what people meant about thinking before you speak.” Fred slowed to walk closer to them. “A lot of the things I say are because I think too much before I speak and can’t keep up with it. Talking slows me down a bit so I can understand what I’m thinking.”

“It’s less about whether or not there are thoughts so much as how much focus is put into the exact words you’re using. I like to just say things as the ideas pop up in my mind, you know?” She scrunched her face. “Wait, since when is this a group conversation?”

“You,” Plessy said, “are really bad at whispering.”

“That’s fair.”

The undergrowth opened up into a large clearing. The carpet of leaves thinned out, becoming occasional boats in a sea of dark green and purple groundcover. A small pocket of trees was in the center of the clearing, with a huge oak reaching for the edges of the town with its massive branches. Buildings made of stone and wood were scattered across the clearing, placed very haphazardly towards the center and arranged much neater along the edge of the treeline. Waist-high hexagonal structures were placed periodically along the edge of the clearing. 

The village was bustling. People of every species hustled about, many turning to watch the group come in before returning to their business. 

A cluster of eyes watched them unwaveringly. 

A group of kids charged at them, talking all at once.

“Swift!”

“You’re back early. You said you wouldn't be back until the evening.”

“Who are they?”

“Did you get me anything?”

“Why is Mall- I mean why is the Bright One here?”

“Now, now.” The Bright One spoke out. “These are our guests. Let us give them some space.”

The children took a few steps back but still watched the group intently.

“I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t mind.” Mizar said. “I like kids.”

“You’re really tall!” A child cried.

“Yeah I am.” Mizar grinned at the kid. “It’s great!” 

“What’s it like to be tall?”

“Can I touch you?” she asked.

The kid nodded.

“It’s like this!” Mizar scooped the child up and put them on her shoulders. “Except you hit your head on things way more often.”

“Hey,” a kid whispered to Fred. “I like your horns.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “It’s nice of you to say that.”

“Are you a tree?”

“I don’t think so, no. Which might be a point in the favor of me not being a tree, because I don’t think trees think, do they?”

“Trees can think!” The child stamped their foot. “The First Mother knows everything and she’s a tree and she has big horns like you but not like you hers are more branchy and smooth but she said that there were others like her but you obviously aren’t because anyone like her would know everything including that they were a tree.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah!” They gave Fred a wide toothy grin. “I wanna be a tree when I grow up!”

Fred squinted in thought. “Is that really a thing that you can be?”

“Why not?” They crossed their arms. “I can be a wolf.”

“Not that I’m anything but a frog two skips from the swap about this sort of thing, but I think wolves are a lot more complicated than trees are, so if you can turn into a wolf it’s probably also possible to turn into a tree. Although, wolves are a lot closer inside-ways to most people then trees are, so that might make them easier to turn into? You wouldn’t have any guts anymore if you turned into a tree, which might be a problem...”

“I don’t care about any of that. I’m gonna be a tree and it’ll be great!”

Stepping away from the mob of kids, Nadeau went up to the Bright One.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” she said, “why is it that there are so many children here? Unless I’m missing something the adult to kid ratio seems off.”

“Our community has a strong affinity for children, and we have the resources to take in those who are unable or unwilling to raise their own, or who walk paths unsafe for little ones. It is not uncommon for scavengers to have us watch theirs while they go on an expedition, for instance.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, I grew up rather sheltered. What is a scavenger?”

The Bright One shook her head slightly. “You have nothing to excuse, we have people from all walks of life pass through. A scavenger is one who seeks out artifacts of the ancients in the ruins they left behind. Between the physical hazards of decaying structures and the potential for corruptions, it is a dangerous path to walk, but the rewards can be of tremendous value.”

“There are enough things that still work after all this time that people are willing to risk their lives to get them?”

“Our ancestors had a unfathomable mastery of craftsmanship.” She turned her head upwards. “It is said that they shaped the Earth and sky to their liking; to manufacture a few trinkets that could last the centuries would be nothing for them.”

“Magic can really do a lot, huh?”

“Indeed it can, however little of what they left behind that still works is magic. Mechanical things are much less susceptible to corruption, and were far more likely to survive the Calamity.”

“What was the Calamity, do you know?” Nadeau asked. “Beyond just the end of the ancients.”

“I know not. You would have to ask that of the First Mother if you truly want an answer.”

“She knows?”

The Bright One nodded. “She was there for it.”

“Really? I didn’t realize it was possible for anyone to be that old.”

“As you so succinctly put it, magic can do a lot. That said, her age has been catching up with her of late, and she spends most of her time in deep sleep. Regretfully there is not much hope for you to meet her soon.” The Bright One paused. “But that does bring me to something I’ve been meaning to ask. The High Priestess said that you were looking for a new place to settle; I realize that you have just arrived, but have you any idea if you would like to stay with us?”

“I’m not sure, really, “Nadeau said. “The bees do make me a bit nervous, even if they are relatively safe. And I don’t think I’m really ready to start worshiping a spirit.”

“Then don’t. We require nothing more than respect for the Star Cloaked One; respect it is wise to give to any being of such power.”

“Really? He doesn’t think it disrespectful for people to lack veneration?”

“He has done much for our community, and there is definitely a communal reverence for Him as a result. However, individuals are free to feel how they wish.”

“That’s a very different way of looking at things,” Nadeau said. “I think I like it.”

“Well.” The Bright One tilted her head. “It is not really true devotion if you are forced into it, is it?”

“I’m not being forced to join this community,” Nadeau said with a shrug. “It wouldn’t be unreasonable to have it as a condition for who is permitted residence. I’m rather surprised you don’t, actually. How do you ensure homogeneity?”

“That isn’t really something we value.”

“Then how do you ensure order?” Nadeau said with surprise. “Especially with all the outsiders that you permit entry?”

The Bright One Laughed. “The opposite of homogeneity isn’t mayhem. We still have rules, we just don’t think beliefs should be regulated. And there is a traveler's code of conduct that most of those ‘outsiders’ hold themselves to, so incidences that threaten the status quo are very rare.”

“And that works?” Nadeau asked skeptically. “How long has this community been around?”

“The pack was formed shortly after the Great Calamity. The precise date the pack abandoned nomadism to form the larger community has been lost, but was within a generation of the pack’s formation.”

“Huh,” Nadeau said. “Hey, would it be possible to sit? My legs aren’t really happy right now.”

“Of course it would be.” The Bright One covered her mouth with one of her upper hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t offer earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it. It isn’t your job to know what my legs need.”

The Bright One led her to a pastel green hexagonal table that was near by. Cool shade was provided by a flower shaped parasol. 

“Are these chairs a good height?” The Bright One asked. “If not I could-”

“It’s fine.” Nadeau interrupted. “They’re fine. I’ve been wedged in a pile of stuff for the past two days. It doesn't take much to be an improvement.”

“Right. Well, let me know if there’s anything I can get you.”

“Can I be curt with you?” Nadeau leaned towards the Bright One.

“Of course you may.”

“Would you actually want someone like me to join your community? These are hardly decorational,” she waved at one of her crutches, “and I don’t want you to take my brother and me in just because you feel some weird debt to Mizar. And don’t get me wrong, I am completely able pull my own weight, but I don’t want to live someplace that acts like I can’t again.”

“Of course you would be welcome here. Why-” She shook her head. “If I were only willing to let you join us as part of my role as liaison to the Light in the Darkness, I wouldn’t have offered without being asked to. As a community we are perfectly capable of supporting additional people, we have no reason to contrive such arbitrary barriers for membership as walking endurance.”

“Is this just some kinda magic thing? You don’t care because you can fix it?”

“Not at all. Magical healing is tricky at best. If you weren’t born with whatever it is that ails you then you could be Turned, but such a ritual should not be undertaken lightly. An attempt at healing could be made with magic if you so desired, but it is a slow and painful process, and depending on what exactly causes the problem is not guaranteed success.” The Bright One smiled slightly, “Unless the circumstance is dire, we tend to stick to the mundane methods such as crutches, braces, and stretching.”

“Braces? What are those?”

“They must be called something else where you’re from. It’s a device that corrects bodily positioning to help with movement and reduce pain.”

“Seriously?” Nadeau exclaimed, “you’re telling me that there are completely mundane methods of helping with this that are relatively well known?”

“You’re telling me that they didn’t even have the concept of them where you are from? It’s a very widely spread knowledge! Manufacture can be a little complicated, but... “ The Bright One shook her head. “No matter. Come with me, we’ll get you fitted for some at once.”

“Wait, what?”

“Unless you don’t want any?” She paused. “I shouldn’t presume, I suppose, but I’ve been told they are immensely helpful.”

“No, it’s not that I just… you know I haven’t settled on staying here, right?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You would waste communal resources on some outsider?”

“It is hardly wasteful to give someone something that will improve their life,” the Bright One said. “And anyway, it’s just some cloth and plaster or something. I hardly know the specifics, but it is nothing we cannot afford to part with at any rate.”

“But you said manufacture can be difficult.” Nadeau was looking at the goblin like she was slowly transforming into a sculpture made of goslings taped together, as unidentifiable and strange as only such a technique could produce.

“That’s why we have specialists, dear. Now come on, Glory’s always excited to start with someone new.” She held up a finger. “Just give me a moment to let everyone know I’ll be leaving them.”

With a quick word to the others, the Bright One briskly lead a bewildered Nadeau through the crowd towards the center cluster of buildings. 

“What was that about?” Ladik asked, waist deep in some puppies he had started playing with.

“Sounds like something activated Mom’s mom mode.” Swift shrugged. 

“But she didn’t look that much older than Nadeau…”

“Oh, Mom will mom anyone.” Swift laughed. “I’m pretty sure she’s fussed over the First Mother before, and she is ancient.”

“Gotta have a pretty strong mom game to mom someone with that title,” Nav commented. “And if you don’t mind me asking, who is the First Mother? They sound important.”

“The First Mother is the founder of the pack of Even Hands,” Lorn answered. “She’s a survivor of the Great Calamity. She was the first one to contact the Star Cloaked One, and has lead our pack with her wisdom throughout the centuries.”

“Can everyone here turn into a dog?” Ladik asked.

“If I had to guess I would say that only two thirds of the pack is actually comprised of werewolves. Getting Turned changes who you are. It’s a very personal decision, and we don’t want to pressure anyone into it.”

Ladik’s eyes went wide. “You can make it so that other people can turn into dogs?”

“Yes, but the ritual of Turning is taken very seriously here. It isn’t, well, under normal circumstances it isn’t something that happens quickly.”

“I wanna be a dog,” Ladik said, not really to anyone.

“Well like I said, it isn’t just being able to take a canine form. It adds a whole new layer of instincts that can be hard to control, which alters your personality permanently, even when you’re still in your original form. We aren’t just going to bite someone who doesn’t understand the consequences.”

“I can’t believe I could be a dog,” Ladik said. “I wanna be a dog.”

“You checked out at ‘yes,’ didn’t you?”

“I don’t mean to interrupt.” Farha shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “But, do you… like living here?”

Lorn blinked. “I… yes. It’s much, um, friendlier, then where I came from, which was a little hard to adjust to at first, but I do like it here. Even if I did end up with the world's most annoying brother.”

“What community did you come from?” Nav asked.

“I’m not sure, actually. My parents were trying to send me someplace via magic and I ended up getting caught in a storm nearby. It was very different then anything I’ve encountered since. The plants weren’t green and there was something wrong with the rain. I was caught in a rainstorm once and got fairly badly burned. I was afraid of the rain for years after that, even after getting Turned healed the scars.”

“That sounds like a pretty bad place to have to live,” Farha said.

“It wasn’t all bad.” Lorn looked distant. “I don’t remember the corruption having any significant presence there. I don’t think we had magical storms either - part of what was so terrifying about the one that I got caught in was that I had no idea what was happening. And from what I recall the magic there was significantly beyond anything I’ve witnessed here. There were really neat interactive illusions all over the place, that would tell you stories or play games or teach you things. I still have one, actually! Only I can see what it’s displaying but it remembers everything I tell it. It’s really quite useful for keeping notes on things.”

“That sounds a lot like some of the things the ancients had,” Mizar said slowly. “Do you remember how you got here?”

“Unfortunately I don’t know anything more specific than that it was some sort of magic. My parents were very secretive about what they were doing. They were worried that something would go wrong and someone would stop them before they could get me away. I don’t even remember what was making them so desperate to get me out - I suppose I shouldn’t discount the possibility that I never knew - but they spent years working on what it was that got me here. I doubt I will have the knowledge or skill to reverse engineer it for some time.”

“You’re trying, though?” Mizar asked excitedly.

“Of course I am!” Lorn clapped her hands together. “With how dangerous travel can be, a proper teleportation spell would be revolutionary. It would have to be modified of course: even ignoring how I presumably missed my intended destination, the journey was rather unpleasant to the point that people might not be willing to undergo it, but I’m sure by the time I get that far into development it will be a cinch to fix that little issue.”

“How unpleasant would this have to be if you think people wouldn’t tolerate it for actual teleportation?” Farha asked.

“It felt like someone stabbed an unfathomably cold trident into the very core of my being, triggering total paralysis. Everything burned and I couldn’t move or do anything. It could really be a deal breaker for the whole thing, but it might not have been the fault of the original spell, just the storm’s influence.”

“And you’re still... you want to do it again?” Farha asked.

“Well yes.” Lorn waved her hand. “You can’t let one bad experience shake you from something this big.”

“I’m pretty sure you can, actually.” Swift muttered.

“Anyway, the unpleasantness was actually useful. I’ve thought a lot about what happened and I’m pretty sure the reason I couldn’t move was because I had been pulled into the Mindscape and was trying to move a body I didn’t have.”

“Why’s that significant?” Mizar asked.

“Because the Mindscape is the key!” Lorn pounded her hand with her fist. “Other experiments I’ve heard of about teleportations have focused on moving things through physical space and how to overcome the severe physical limitations of that. But by utilizing the Mindscape you’re operating under different rules so you bypass those limitations completely. It brings its own challenges to the table to be sure, but they’ll fall into place in time.”

“So.” Farha shuffled his feet. “What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?” Lorn asked.

“Living here,” Farha said. “You said that it was friendly… well friendlier than where you were before. And that probably means friendlier than where I’m from. But besides that. What is it like?”

“Well,” Lorn tilted her head back. “There’s a lot of room for me to pursue my research, which I appreciate. Um. The full moon can be rather obnoxious because pups tend to lack much self control over their wolf instincts. We’re basically the only supplier of honey, which brings in a lot of trade, so there’s almost always new people and we get a lot of news about other areas. Things have been a bit busy lately because a sickness passed through, but normality is steadily returning.”

Swift shook his head. “Lorn, no offense, but you suck at this.” He swept his six pawed arms wildly. “It’s great here! The community has a rich history stretching back to the Calamity. We got lots of really nice people who know lots of awesome things. More honey than the rest of civilization combined. The gardens are wonderfully scenic, the young pups keep the rodents out and the kids are always a blast to be around. There’s -”

“I don’t think he was looking for a sales pitch, Swift.”

“He’s looking for a new place to settle down and I just wanna make sure that our wonderful community is given its proper due.” Swift turned back to Farha. “The long and short of it is this is a good place to live and we would love to have you.”

“What I’m seeing so far does seem, well, it certainly looks interesting, I’m just.” He shook his head. “I’m worried about what happens if it turns out I don’t fit in well. I don’t want to be stuck like that again.”

“Well, if it doesn’t work out you could always just head out with a trading caravan to somewhere else. They’re normally pretty happy to have an extra set of hands.”

“They would let me just leave?”

“Well yeah.” Swift said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “What kinda place would force someone to stay in it? Outside of the weird hell dimension that Lorn came from, that is.”

“We don’t know it was a different dimension,” Lorn corrected.

“I guess that is a little weird.” Farha’s neck was pushed down into his body. “But are you really… have you ever left? Personally?”

“Nah, I like it here too much. But lots of people leave, even people who do like living here, because they want to do some trading with our neighbors or made friends with some travelers, or just want to see the world. Many of them come back, but someone’s always finding somewhere else to spread their roots.”

“Would it be possible to stay a few days? Just to, you know, try and get more of a feeling for this place?

“I was assuming you’d be. Mom doesn’t joke around about offers of hospitality, if you aren’t in a huge rush she would probably be a bit offended if you just ran off right away.”

“I was hoping to stay a bit,” Mizar said. “We could all use some real rest after that storm.” 

“I suspect it will be awhile before Mom returns,” Lorn said. “Do you want us to show you to where you’ll be staying?”

“That’d be good.”

"We have some fairly nice accommodations you can use," Lorn said. 

"It's just a really nice bit of the woods,” Swift cut in. “Softest bushes around." 

"Because nothing says hospitality like ticks." Lorn shook her head. "No, there is an inn, complete with walls and other normal inn things." 

Weaving through the crowd, the siblings led them to a large building towards the center of the town. It stood out from the surrounding structures, both for its unusual three stories of height and the fact it was grey and yellow brick rather than pale wood. Even with the crumbling edges of the aging bricks, the building had a comforting solidness to it, a stability that transcended architecture and made everyone feel a little more in place just with its presence. 

Inside was quieter, but there was still a number of people milling about. The lower floor was open, with large, soft looking couches and chairs scattered about. Around the room on small tables were a handful of mid-sized crystals, each roughly a foot from end to end, which gave off light and heat. 

Making a magically formed crystal give off energy was easy, although making them release it at a slow and steady pace was a bit more complicated. It was very easy to make crystals explode. As such it was slightly rare to see them used like this, to do so safely required a level of stability and confidence in magic that many places lacked. The degree of comfort that crystals could provide was enough to make it worth the effort, though - fire couldn’t provide the same even warmth and was hard to read by. 

A nixie man greeted them, and after a quick discussion with the siblings led them to three rooms. The rooms weren’t the largest in the world, but they had enough beds for everyone, and after sleeping on the road, soft mattresses were really all it took to make them the best of all possible accommodations. 

They slept. It was good.

They stayed in town a few days. Mizar and the Bright One talked a lot. Farha, Nadeau and Ladik decided they liked the place enough to try staying. Even if Nadeau hadn’t started to like the place - and she actually did, to her own surprise - she really liked the idea of not traveling with Mizar anymore.

And before they knew it, it was time for the rest of the party to move on.

“It’s been an honor having you.” The Bright One put a hand on the center of her chest. “I am glad fate crossed our paths.”

“The honor is mine to be had.” Mizar bowed her head. “Your hospitality has been beyond generous; is there anything I can do to repay you?”

“Your company was payment enough. I wouldn’t dream of asking more of you.”

“Uh,” Swift cut in, “actually, there is something.”

“Swift,” Lorn whispered loudly.

“Don’t ‘Swift’ me, This is important.” Swift intently gazed into Mizar’s eyes. “How serious are you about that offer?”

“I don’t say things I’m not prepared to commit to.” Mizar said. “What is it that you need?”

“I don’t want to make you feel like you have to do this, you don’t owe us anything for staying, but we can’t currently do it ourselves and it’s really important that it gets done.” Swift stopped and took a breath. “There is a child that found his way to us, and he wasn’t in a good place before and at some point his emotions were Taken by the Unkindness. He’s doing a lot better now and I want to get them back, but we just had a sickness pass through and can’t really afford to send an expedition to the Unkindness.”

“What does the child want?” Mizar asked.

“Nothing. He said that he was fine with doing this but…” Swift shook his head. “Wanting things requires emotions. He literally cannot care one way or another about this, or anything else.”

“So how do you plan on getting them back?”

“The Unkindness has a home not too far from here where they keep the things that they Take. Apparently they can be convinced to return things if you want them enough.”

“They actually have a physical base?” Fred asked. “I always figured it was something more abstract then that. Is there just like, a mountain of things surrounded by guard crows, constantly growing as a stream of crows brings in forks and couches and stuff?”

“I’m not sure how physical the place is. There is certainly a physical entrance, but it’s been described as an impossibly deep hole. I haven’t heard anything about what’s at the bottom, it might be all that.”

“So,” Mizar said, “you want to just walk into crow city and ask really nicely for them to give this kids emotions back?”

“I know it’s not much of a plan, and I understand if you aren’t willing to just go in on so little.”

“Are you kidding me?” Mizar practically shouted, “that sounds awesome!”

“Really?” Swift took a step forward. “You’ll do it?

“Heck yeah I will. I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to go to the heart of the Unkindness for the world.” She paused and put a finger to her mouth. “Well, that’s probably a lie. I wouldn’t pass it up for much less than the world though.”

“That’s great!” Swift was bouncing on his many legs. “Let me get Jorge and we can head out whenever you’re ready.”

He scuttled off, returning after a few minutes with Jorge. Jorge looked to be in his early teens, with long black hair hanging messily around his pale elbows. He glanced at Mizar and the rest of the party, but didn’t react in any observable way. 

“Jose, this is Mizar, and the people behind her are Fred, Nav, and Plessy. We’re going to be traveling with them for a bit.”

“Okay.” Jorge said quietly, and then after a moment, like he wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to say, “hi?”

“Hello.” Mizar smiled at him. “Are you ready to face the Unkindness?” 

“Um.” Jose Shrugged. 

“Fair.” Mizar said. “How’s everyone else feeling? Ya’ll want to do this?”

“Not gonna lie, I’m actually pretty psyched about the potential to see where the Unkindness is based,” Nav said.

“I’m with Nav,” Plessy said.

“I agree with them too,” Fred said. “It never even occurred to me before that there might be an actual place that the crows bring things, and it’s really a ripe snipe that there is.”

“Alright then!” Mizar grinned. “Let’s do this.”

Swift led them for about a day to the Unkindness’ stronghold, in the foothills of the mountains. To say that there were a lot of crows was like saying that someone's gut has a lot of bacteria - not inaccurate per se but completely understating the scale of the situation. Crows lined the many trees like leaves, holding fairly still and staring at the travelers. Dense streams of crows would periodically move through the sky, blocking out everything behind them.

The entrance was impossible to miss. It was a massive hole, lined with a thick metal exterior that rose about a foot out of the ground. The hole was so large a house could probably fit in its circumference. The metal was unidentifiable, about six feet thick, seamless, and silvery, and the interior of it was hugged by a narrow staircase. A wall of crows was perched along the edge of the metal, and those near the stairs parted as the party approached. 

The late evening sun cast a bit of light down one of the sides, which did little to alleviate the pitch blackness of the hole. There was no indication of how deep it went. 

A thin stream of crows entered, and clouds of them flew out in bursts.

Since no one seemed particularly determined to climb a presumably huge number of stairs into a pitch black hole after a day of walking, they decided instead to set up camp, and prepared themselves to enter the unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that took so long, this chapter really didn't want to come out. I'm still not really thrilled with it but hey, it's done.
> 
> Melissa, Swift, and Lorn are reincarnations of Hank, Stan and Ford. I figured souls would be more likely to jump species when there are just less options in general, so long as they can be something similarly cognizant. 
> 
> The next chapter should be out much faster. I've been excited to write it since last summer and already have some large chunks of it done.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some odd formatting that might be hard to read on a phone. I would recomend either reading the fic in landscape mode or reading the vanilla formatting view [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11863335).

Morning came like it always does, slowly and filled with the sounds of thousands of crows.

 

Mizar rather wished it was more like other mornings, where although there certainly were plenty of crows making plenty of noises they weren’t anywhere near her personally. The crows would have relatively quiet stretches where they kept a fairly even level of calls, but every now and then a squabble would break out or a hawk would fly overhead and the world would become a cawcophony of cawing. 

 

There was really no point in trying to get more sleep once dawn broke. 

 

The light of day made the entrance to the Unkindness’ lair rather intimidating. Not only was the hole huge and vertigo-inducing in its indeterminate depth, but the morning sun reflecting on the thick metal border shined with a painful blinding brightness, obfuscating all details of the entrance behind its wall of light.  

 

No amount of light could swallow up the pit entirely, though. It was simply too large and too deep. 

 

Crows were peeling away from the megamurder in small groups, presumably to go about their normal crow business of getting food or socializing or stealing cows. 

 

The sun had moved behind a hill by the time breakfast was done, making it reasonable to actually look at the entrance. The seamless metal walls had somehow made it through the centuries completely unweathered: the only disruption to the unnaturally smooth surface was a line of glyphs written in an old runic alphabet that were cut into the metal. The letters’ edges were sharp to the touch.

 

A steady stream of cool, moist air rose from the hole.

 

It felt like they should be doing something to prepare for the presumed long trek ahead of them, but no one could think of anything specific to actually do. 

 

No sense stalling. It was time to descend. 

 

The staircase was wide enough for two people to walk side by side, but there wasn’t a guard rail. As no one was quite ready to fall to their death, they walked single file down the seemingly endless spiral.

 

It was quiet. Surprisingly so, considering the stairs were made of metal. The sounds of each footstep were soft, like the sound was made by something far away.

 

Nav spoke up, disrupting the steady footfall.

 

“What is this place?” they asked. The chamber swallowed any echo that their voice may have formed. 

 

Alcor eased into the physical plane. “ **What would you be willing to give me for an answer to that?** ”   
  


“I don’t know if I’m that curious,” Nav said.

 

“I’ll bite. I know a bit about the Unkindness and their Keeper, but this structure looks like something built by the ancients that the crows just took advantage of.” Mizar put her hands on her hips. “I’ll get you an animal around the size of a deer within a week for an explanation of why this place was built.”

 

“ **It’s a bit of a history lesson,** ” Alcor said.

 

“Seems like we got a bit of a walk ahead of us, Mizar said. “Gotta talk about something. And I think I can handle whatever the past can throw at me.”

 

“ **Well then, I accept your deal.** ” Alcor grinned as Mizar’s hand flashed with blue fire. “ **And it’s not really complicated. Mostly it’s just… people.” Alcor shook his head. “Before the calamity, people made devices that had the potential to annihilate everything in a stupidly large area. Any one of these could create a continent-wide disaster, and there were a lot of them. To try and minimize the damage caused if there was an accident, they built and kept them deep underground, in highly reinforced bunkers like this one.** ”

 

“Why would you risk making anything that dangerous?”

 

“ **That was the whole point. I mean, there were times when it wasn’t, when the devices could do such useful things that they were considered to be worth the risk, but people are drawn to raw destructive power and they raced with reckless abandon to make the thing with the biggest possible boom. It was generally said to be about defence, because if your neighbor has a weapon how can you be safe unless you have a better weapon? No one is going to attack someone who has a bigger stick, or so the logic went. Not that it really should matter how much better your things are if your neighbor can still wipe out all life on the continent, but that never seemed to stop anyone.** ”

 

“So that was the calamity, then?” There was a note of uncharacteristic melancholy in Mizar’s voice. “A war with weapons that shouldn’t have been made?”

 

“ **Nah** ,” Alcor said, “ **people weren’t quite** **_that_ ** **dumb. They were well aware how bad it would be if anyone actually set off any of these weapons, so they locked them behind impassable walls of bureaucracy. They really were built to be symbols more than anything else. The Calamity was actually an accident, as much as anything doing what it was built to do can be said to be an accident. It’s pretty fortunate for Earth, though. If these things had gone off outside of their protective bunkers I don’t think the planet would still be remotely habitable.** ”

 

“How do enough of these things go off on accident to cause the Calamity?”

 

“ **Shenanigans.** ” Alcor shrugged. “ **Basically, many of them ended up connected in the dreamscape due to an overlooked quirk of magic, one got triggered by a series of unlikely events and the power of its blast set off a few others. Then everything got amplified by an unrelated device and you got yourself a worldwide apocalypse.** ”

 

“If only a few of them went off, does that mean that there are still intact ones that could cause another Calamity at any point?” Mizar asked, alarmed.

 

“ **They’re all way too decayed to be even a minor threat anymore,** ” Alcor said. “ **Unless you were to go into their bunkers, then they’d be a major cancer risk.** ”

 

“So if this was supposed to be a bunker capable of containing some awesome weapon, why is it all open? Shouldn’t this be solid to absorb all the energy or whatever?”

 

“ **What we’re on was originally the outer wall of the bunker,** ” he explained. “ **The center was a very large building filled with maintenance stuff and various security things. This specific place is special, you see. When its bomb went off it exploded so hard it ripped through the dimensional barrier, and the bunker collapsed and fell through.** “

 

“The whole thing collapsed?” Nav said. “Are these stairs going to be intact further down?”

 

“ **The outer layer of the bunker was just about the sturdiest thing people could make back then.** ” Alcor dismissively waved his hand. “ **It’ll be fine.** ”

 

“Wait a second, are we entering a different dimension?” Mizar asked.

 

“ **Sort of,** ” Alcor said. “ **When the rip first happened it led pretty much directly into a different dimension, but since then it drifted apart from this one. We’re essentially entering a bubble connecting our dimension to another; it’s a threshold space maintained by both while being a part of neither of them. Once they drift far enough it will burst and the rift will either heal or lead directly to the chaotic realm between dimensions.** ”

 

“A chaos realm rift?” Nav said. “That sounds like it’s probably a bad thing.”

 

Alcor shrugged. “ **Shouldn’t matter much to you - you’ll have died long,** **_long_ ** **before it’s going to be an issue. And anyway there’s nothing left there that’s stupid enough to try anything.** ”

 

“Left?” Nav asked. “That sounds like a story.”

 

“ **It’s a great one.** ” Alcor grinned. “ **What would you be willing to pay me to hear it?** ”

 

“Oh would you look at that?” Nav looked down over the edge. “There goes my interest. Hopefully it won't hit any crows on the way down.”

 

“So,” Swift said. “Future danger aside, this is completely safe then? I don’t want to take Jorge someplace too dangerous; he doesn’t really have reflexes.”

 

“ **I wouldn’t call it completely safe.** ” Alcor put his hands on his hips. “ **The stair’s lack of a rail is a serious OSHA violation. Also the air is probably carcinogenic, but what’s a little cancer ever do to anyone?** ”

 

The darkness grew around them as they descended deeper, growing thicker until it swallowed the last stray bits of light. They couldn’t see each other; even Swift’s cavern-evolved goblin eyes were useless. The only thing remotely visible was Alcor, but even the constellations that peppered his dark form were dim. The sky itself seemed to be missing - where the circle of light had been now held only blackness.

 

They had not descended anywhere near far enough to possibly justify the morning light’s absence. 

 

It wasn’t very cold and yet their skin tingled like it was on the edge of numbness. 

 

Mizar put a hand on the wall to guide her and stared at her flashlight. Looking at it straight on, she could see its circle of light, but pointing it at the wall it cast no illumination unless it was uselessly close. 

 

Distant caws drifted up the open space.

 

Sharp fractures in the wall caught against Mizar’s fingertips like hooks. Smooth bumpy waves of warped wall surrounded them, so her fingers would rise and fall, only a few millimeters at the edge but whole inches right before the sudden jagged tear. A transfixing dance between smooth and sharp played out under her fingers.

 

“I’m not the only one that’s more than a little spooked, am I?” Fred asked, her voice clear and close. “Cause this place is causing me a bit of a concern right now.”

 

“I would certainly be happier if I could see the stairs ahead of me,” Nav said. “Sturdiest material of the ancients or not, that talk of powerful weapons and collapsing buildings makes me nervous.” 

 

“I feel like I’m going to fall forward eternally with each new step,” Plessy said. “I like it here.”

 

“You would, you weirdo,” Nav said.

 

“Sure, I may be a weirdo; I will give you that. But what does that make you? For a weirdo is something that one is, a fixed part of one’s very being. But dating a weirdo? That is a choice, and a choice that you made handedly,” Plessy retorted. 

 

“That makes me fucking awesome,” Nav said. “Cause weirdos are, in my experience, pretty much the greatest people this world has to offer, and by dating one, some of that innate coolness is transferred to me by proxy.”

 

“So,” Plessy said coyly, “what you’re saying is you only love me because I’m basically perfect in every way.”

 

“That’s it.” Nav flicked their arm up. “That’s exactly it. I’ve never been so called out in my life.”

 

“Well, I suppose I can’t hold it against you,” Plessy said. “I’d probably become enamored by my own charms too, were I not immune to such things.”

 

“Oh, you’re immune to being charmed now?” Nav narrowed their eyes.

 

“Completely above it,” she responded.

 

“Oh reeeeeally?”

 

“Absolutely,” Plessy said, her head high. “I’m so far above it I’m at grave risk of suffocation from how thin the atmosphere is up here.”

 

“You’re really cute when you’re full of shit.”

 

“A genuine compliment?” Plessy giggled. “Noooooooo, my one weakness!”

 

“And you better believe that there’s more where that came from!” Nav said, grinning.

 

“Is there nothing I can do to obtain your mercy?”

 

“No…” Nav shook their head. “No, it is far too late for that now. Do you have any last words before you take your onslaught of admiration?”

 

“I love how dramatic you are.”

 

“Heh,” Nav chuckled, the darkness swallowing their cocky grin. “So it’s a duel then?” 

 

“If fate has conspired to bring such an event to fruition then so be it,” Plessy said with a heavy weight to her voice.

 

“I love your ironic seer shtick.”

 

“Is that so? Well I love how you laugh at my dumb jokes.”

 

“Your jokes aren’t stupid, they’re hilarious. I love how funny you are.”

 

“You guys are really cute,” Fred said.

 

“A challenger has appeared!” Nav exclaimed. “You know, Fred, you’re a delight to be around.”

 

“You brew a great cup of tea,” Plessy said.

 

“Oh… no, I didn’t mean to get involved.” Fred blushed. “Thanks for the compliments, though. You’re really nice.” 

 

“Yeah?” Nav’s grin was evident in their voice. “Well your  _ face  _ is really nice.”

 

“Your welcoming presence is a breath of fresh air,” Plessy said solemnly. 

 

The talk helped fill the space and made the voluminous cavern seem slightly less like an ancient tomb. It was still incredibly freaky, going down down down to destination unknown, each footfall paired with a panicked moment before the next step was felt where it seemed there was no next step, there was nothing but the darkness to fall through forever. 

 

Needless to say, it was slow going. And there was a lot to go through. Without any visible sky or light, it was impossible to gauge how much time passed, winding around slowly through the darkness. It was definitely a long time, though, far longer than anyone wanted to be walking down stairs, impenetrable darkness or not. But eventually, after everyone’s muscles were starting to get sore, after it seemed like there was nothing in the world beyond this staircase, specks of light started to appear down below.

 

The lights were ethereal colorful streaks that raced up and down, not perfectly straight but as if tracing out some indecipherable ruins. The lights themselves were too faint to illuminate the room but their dancing reflections along the walls revealed what fingers had already figured out; the walls were no longer the peculiar smooth material of the ancients but rough, textured stone. 

 

The cawing stopped as they approached the lights, leaving the room in haunting silence, only broken by the occasional flapping of wings.

 

The farther down they went the more lights there were. They still were dim, but together they were just bright enough to dimly illuminate the forms of crows lining the edges of the stairs like the world's most precarious railing. 

 

They finally seemed to be reaching the bottom. 

 

Streaks of light were grouped together in the center of the room likes bars of a cage. Within was a truly massive bird, whose shimmering form appeared to be made of liquid. Their tail poured down like a waterfall into a perfectly circular pool beneath them. The lights around them filled their form with an ever-shifting rainbow, dancing off their surface onto the walls, its pastel echo briefly revealing the dark iridescent rainbows hidden in the feathers of the numerous birds that filled the space. 

 

And the birds were so very numerous. Thousands of beady eyes shone in the darkness, all fixed on the party. They covered the floor, they perched on crevices in the walls, they lined the staircase. With each step forward came the sounds of wings as someone landed behind them.

 

At last they made it to the end of the stairs, to solid and flat floor. 

 

The room exploded in cawing. They could make out some words in the noise, but it all seemed to run together as a single presence of sound.

 

The large bird at the center of the room spoke, their haunting voice clear and easy to make out through the inescapable presence of the chatter.

 

therearepeoplewhoarewhodescendsthestairswhoseeksthekeeper

_ S O    Y O U   H A V E   E N T E R E D   O U R   D O M A I N _

groupmanyarefriendsdangerouswhocawcomespeaktheyrehere

theyhavecometheyareheresosoonveryquickthestarshavecome

_ W E   W E R E  N O T   E X P E C T I N G   Y O U   S O   S O O N _

alreadyherenotexpectedforyearsnotexpectedwithothersyescaw

cawblindinglightguidinglightforgottenonedreamweaver

dreamkeeper   _ F O R G O T  T  E N    O N E _   dreamfather

Islandmakerciphersuserperburnedpinelaststartwinstars

 

 

“ **Don’t mind me, I’m just tagging along with her,** ” Alcor replied, gesturing at Mizar.

 

cawpriestessthegleefulthemagnificentconqueroremperess

drivingwill _T H E   B U R  N I N G   H E A R T_   fearsomewill

shootingstarcawthechaostouchedsoulcawbrightstarmizar

whyhavetheycometouswhyaretheyhere

W H A T   B R I N G S   Y O U   T O   U S

whatdotheycawwantfromuscawwhyhere

 

Mizar walked forward, slowly and purposely, until she was at the edge of the pool in front of the entity the crows were referring to as The Keeper. 

 

“Oh Keeper, of the Unkindness,” she said. 

 

“I am Mizar, the Twin Star, high priestess of the demon Alcor, the Light Breaking through the Darkness. I am here on behalf of those of the Pack of Even Hand, of their first mother and of this child.

 

“I would ask of you to return what you were given by the child. I would beseech you to return to him his emotions.”

 

theywantitbackwecanreturntheywantitretuned

_ W E   W I L L   G L A D L Y   R E T U R N   I T _

thechildhasneedwewillhelpcawfinetakeitback

notforfreethingforthingyoumustgiveusitsatradecaw

_ B U T   W E   W I L L   N E E D   I N   E X C H A N G E _

anofferingmustbemadeanofferingwewilltakewhatbe

secretyesgood

_ A   S E C R E T _

hiddenknowledge

whatwaslostwhatcanbefound

_ A   F O R G O T T E N   P A T H _

whatwasknowncanberelearned

onemore

_ O R _

shiny

ashinygoodshinyilikeshinysyesgood

gottahaveshinyagoodshinycoolshiny

shinys        . . .  R I G H T          ashiny

shinyprettyashinyrareshinyloveshiny

awyeahlovetheshinysogoodloveitshiny

  
  


“I have for you an offering,” she said. “A forgotten path, freely given.”

 

For a minute the cawing intensified to the point that talking was impossible.

 

“I am the last shaman of the Fallwood people.” She spoke slowly and clearly. “I am the last to know our rites. I am the last to carry our history. Master of the Lost, I offer you the name that I was offered upon my birth. I offer you all that comes with it. This name is not an identifier but an identity. It is a title, it is that history. The name is a signifier that its bearer has gone down the path of shamanhood. I offer you a name, Keeper of Secrets, and through it I offer you my birthright.”

 

thatsagoodonewelldonewelltakenotashinyohwell

_ T H E S E  T E R M S  A R E  P E R M I S S I B L E _

nameahistorycawregiftingissoclassycawyesgood

yesbringtheofferingcawgiveusthepathcawnoshinycome

_ C O M E  F O R W A R D  W I T H  Y O U R  O F F E R I N G _

comeforthyescawgiveittouscawbringherewetakeyesyes

 

 

Mizar stepped forward, testing the depth of the pool in front of her. Her foot stayed on the surface, however, and having established she wouldn’t sink she confidently strolled over to The Keeper. When she was a few feet in front of them, the liquid suddenly stopped supporting her and she plunged into darkness.

 

She gasped in surprise, only to find she had no problem breathing.

 

It was warm beneath the surface. She felt lightheaded and fuzzy. Strange noises came from above. It was like someone was talking very far away. There was stuff down here. Big piles of weird things. She thought about her childhood. About learning what she was going to be doing. About the rituals she would do. About the people she would lead. About those who came before. And the more she thought about it, the less she remembered. It was warm. She was warm. What had she been thinking about? Maybe she should get out of this, leave this… wherever this was. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea. 

 

She walked aimlessly for awhile before it got shallow enough for her to surface again. Her head hitting the open air was like falling face-first into the snow; the cold shocked her system and her thoughts became coherent again almost instantly. 

 

She finished walking out of the liquid and tried to wring out her hair, only to find it was already dry. 

 

Jorge was walking towards the pool with the same slow, aimless gait that he seemed to do everything with. He walked like his legs were a separate entity with separate intentions that he didn’t know; like he would be surprised to arrive at whatever destination his legs brought him to if he could only muster the energy.

 

He reached the pool and collapsed down to his knees like a dropped ragdoll. He cupped his hands together and took a drink from the dark liquid. 

 

Almost instantly he started coughing. Deep, heavy, choking coughs like something was caught far down his throat. 

 

Swift rushed over to help. He slowed as he got to Jorge, moving a hand to the child’s shoulder. 

 

Jorge pushed him away. “You did this!” he said hoarsely. “Why would you do this? Everything was fine the way it was!”

 

He was angrily blinking back tears. 

 

Swift sighed. ”I guess that answers the question of how you’re feeling.”

 

“How am I feeling? I feel awful! I feel like shit! I never wanted to think about what happened again and now I can’t stop.”

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Swift asked, his voice betraying that he already knew what answer he was to receive.

 

“No I don’t want to talk about it!” the teen shouted. “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want anything to do with it! And why would I want to talk about it with you? You’re the one that did this to me! This is all your fault. I hate you! I hate you I hate you I  **_hate_ ** you!”

 

Jorge ran away to the stairs, shoving anyone in his way out of it. Taking the stairs two at a time, he quickly ascended out of view, which didn’t mean much considering how dark it was. Your hand could get far enough away from you to disappear from sight if it got especially ambitious. 

 

“Well that’s probably not the response that you were hoping for,” Mizar said to Swift. “Sucks, dude.”

 

“I mean, it isn’t ideal,” he said, “but it’s about what I was expecting. He’s been through a lot and hasn’t dealt with any of it. It’s only natural that he would start with some pretty negative emotions. Honestly, I’m glad to see anger; I was worried he would just shut down again.”

 

“You gonna try to calm him down?”  Mizar asked.

 

“Me? No. I’d probably bugger it all up, honestly. I’m… not the best at helping someone work through their trauma. We got some people back home that know what they’re doing though. 

At this point I’m just here to make sure he can get to them safely.”

 

“Should we be concerned that he’s running ahead?” Nav asked.

 

“He’ll tire himself out long before he reaches the top.” Swift looked up the stairs for any sign of his ward. “Still. We should probably go after him.”

 

“Like, right now?” Nav asked. “I was hoping to rest a little first. I’m still tired from the climb down.”

 

“I’m not sure I could rest right here,” Swift said. “Anxiety over Jorge aside, I feel like I’m invading the crows’ space.”

 

“Wait, we’re leaving already?” said Fred. “I was hoping I could get something back from the Unkindness, while we’re right here and all.” 

 

“What’d you have Taken?” Nav asked.

 

“Oh, nothing as hoity-toity as my emotions or nothing, just some dried cantaloupe actually, but I’ve been craving it somethin fierce lately and hey, no sense leaving the butcher empty handed.” 

 

“Fruit,” Swift said, in the same way as one might respond to being told that white picket fences were actually mind controlling parasites, and were secretly responsible for all of society's ills. 

 

“Yep,” Fred said, completely oblivious to any subtext. “Got it awhile back and kinda forgot about it for a ways. Then one day I wake up with that hunger that only cantaloupe can fill and get all excited ‘cause hey, I just remembered I got some. Two shakes and a beat later I find that I can’t find it. I’m not even certain that it was Taken, to be open as a peach, might have just lost it.”

 

“What were you planning on giving up in return?” Nav asked slowly.

 

“Oh I got all kinds of childhood memories I could best do without.”

 

“Memories?” Nav asked disbelievingly. “For some fruit?”

 

_ T H E S E  T E R M S  A R E  P E R M I S S I B L E _

 

“Oh, nice,” Fred said. “So how’s this work then? I just walk over here thinking about that which I’d rather not think about and-”

 

Fred plunged beneath the surface of the liquid.

 

Fred emerged from the liquid, after a minute or so, triumphantly holding a leather satchel. 

 

**“Personally I wouldn’t have returned the bag. Let’s see her carry a pound and a half of dried fruit with her hands.”**

 

“You’re a bit of a pedantic prick, aren’t you?” Nav said.

 

**“I like to think of it as teaching the value of careful wording.”**

 

“So a pretentious pedantic prick, got it.”

 

“Pretty much,” Mizar said.

 

**“Hey! You’re supposed to be on my side.”**

 

Mizar shrugged. “Maybe if you tried being less of a pretentious pedantic prick I wouldn’t feel the need to call you out on your shit.”

 

“ **Well maybe I’m old and have been through things you couldn't dream of and have earned the right to conduct myself in however prickish of a manner I like.”**

 

“Then you should learn not to get offended when people tell it like it is.”

 

“Well I’ve gone and done what I was gonna go and do,” Fred said. “Anyone else have something they might want back or should we be off?”

 

“I would appreciate it if we would go follow Jorge,” Swift said. “If that’s alright with everyone. I wouldn’t want to stop you from being reunited with that cool leaf you saw once just because I want to keep an eye on the child in my care.”

 

“You want some cantaloupe?” Fred asked, as they started to walk.

 

“...” Swift put his face in his hands. “I kind of do, actually.”

 

It didn’t take them long to catch up to Jorge. He had stopped fairly close to the bottom and sat down, legs dangling off into the dark abyss. Not that anyone could see that through the supernatural blackness. 

 

“I hate stairs,” he declared. “They’re awful and there are too many of them and I hate them.”

 

“You ready to go home, Jorge?”

 

“That would involve climbing more stairs, so no. I’m not ready to go home. I’m going to sit here forever and never climb a stair again.”

 

“We can rest awhile if that’s what you want,” Swift said gently. 

 

“No I don’t want to rest here,” Jorge said with his voice raised. “It’s dark and creepy and I don’t like it.”

 

“Well, what do you want, then?” Swift asked.

 

“I want to be at home, like I was,” Jorge said. “Not feeling all these things, like I was. Not here. Not in the dark on the stairs surrounded by more stairs and hating everything. It sucks, Swift! This sucks!”

 

“Well, the faster we get moving the faster we can get home. Then it can suck slightly less.”

 

They continued to ascend the staircase. Mizar’s thoughts drifted to her childhood. She could still remember the general shape of things; what she learned and why. When she tried to remember any details, however, she started to feel all warm and fuzzy again, and the harder she tried to focus the more lightheaded she got. 

 

She could still remember her exponent just fine. Which was a relief? Yes. She wouldn’t want to forget about him,  no matter how much it still hurt.

 

The ascent went considerably faster than the descent had. The sky revealed itself as a circle of light after what felt like no time at all, at least compared to what they had been expecting. And once they could actually see the stairs ahead of them they could move considerably faster. They were at the top before they knew it. 

 

The sun had barely moved from the position that it had been when they went down, despite the fact that it seemed unlikely that a whole day had passed. 

 

They took a short rest and started down the long trek back to the Pack.

 

It was late evening when they got back. The area was still crowded, despite the hour. The buzz of people going about their evenings and the literal buzzing of bees filled the air, undisturbed by their presence.

 

The Bright One came out to greet them, led by an eager child. 

 

“It is good to see you returned,” she said. “Did you find what it was that you sought?”

 

Jorge took that moment to run off - the thought of sitting there while people talked about what had just happened to him like it was some sort of victory to be celebrated was too much to bear. 

 

“Yeah,” Swift answered. “He’s definitely feeling things again.”

 

“And not too happy about it, or so it would appear.”

 

“No he…” Swift sighed. “I wish I could do more for him. Feelings ain’t my strong suit.”

 

“He will heal in time.” The Bright One smiled. “For now I imagine that he will want some space. We can have-”

 

She stopped and looked behind her.

 

A wave of silence swept through the crowd, which parted leaving a straight path between the party and the oldest and strangest looking dryad any of them had ever seen. Not that that was saying too much considering that dryads were somewhat rare, but the half-wolf form that she took was bizarre by most any standards. Her skin, where visible, was ether rough, flaking bark, or fleshy in a way that just looked  _ wrong _ . The moss that hung off her fur was so prevalent that it was impossible to determine what was hair and what was plant. Each step shook her whole body; even standing still it seemed like the wind might blow her away.

 

Dominating her features were her massive branch-like antlers, covered in fiery leaves. Withered brown leaves hid amongst the bright reds and golds. 

 

She was hunched over a staff - a small tree, really. If she were to stand upright, she would probably be pushing twelve feet. 

 

“First Mother,” The Bright One said in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you to be active.”

 

“I’m old, not dead,” the First Mother said, her gruff voice skillfully projected. “I can still uproot myself when the time calls for it.”

 

She turned to Mizar.

 

“So,” she said, “you must be the latest Mizar.”

 

“That’s me.”

 

“What’s your name, kid?”

 

“Mizar,” Mizar said. “My name is Mizar.”

 

“Well that’s sure confusing.”

 

“ **That’s what I said!** ” Alcor said. “ **But she was all ‘** oh who cares it’s perfect **’.** ”

 

“And of course you can’t deny your twin star anything.”    
  


“ **Look Catreena, have you ever tried fighting with a Mizar? Once they’ve made up their mind about something they’re impossibly stubborn.** ”

 

“Whatever.” She turned back to Mizar. “I heard you all went out of your way to help one of my kids.”

 

“It was nothing, really,” Mizar said.

 

“Oh, it’s something alright. A Mizar traveling with Alcor… you got something you want to get done. And you still went out of your way to get some kid what he needed, even if he didn’t want it. I appreciate it.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Mizar said. 

 

“So tell me, what is it that you’re doing?”

 

“I’m going to fix the corruption,” Mizar declared. “To bring back what was lost with the Calamity.”

 

“No you damn well aren’t,” The First Mother snapped.

 

“Excuse me?” Mizar asked.

 

“There are some things that are better off forgotten, kid,” the First Mother said. “Don’t get me wrong, low infant mortality rates and a stable population were great. I’d love to see the return of vaccines and what have you. Instantaneous communication? Still miss that. But the other crap? The social side of things? You don’t understand what it was like to live back then. To be a preter, to be the wrong ‘kind’ of human, to move wrong, or act wrong, or look wrong, or to be born under the wrong circumstances… you might as well not be a person. There had been millennia of power and wealth being secured by a small group of people and everyone outside of that group didn’t matter. We had the ability to cure just about any ailment but people still died of sickness because they didn’t have the right resources to exchange for treatment. You could communicate instantly with anyone anywhere on the planet, but everything was monitored and if you said the wrong thing you would be locked away.”

 

“How could a small group of people keep control for that long?”

 

“There was a lot to it,” she explained. “Partially, they had the best of the best of the wonderful technology of the ancients. When you have a whole fleet of machines, any one of which could take down a small army, no one is going to successfully overpower you. A lot of it wasn’t brute force, though. Information was carefully controlled. It didn’t occur to many people that there was any better way things could be. Conversation was monitored to the point that it was almost impossible to find or plan protests, don’t mention an actual revolt. And there was a lot of propaganda, saying that everyone was being treated equally, and those who said otherwise were just lazy, not working hard enough, and trying to get special treatment. Or that anyone could become one of the elites with enough hard work, and because of how hard the elites worked they deserved the obscene amounts of power they held.”

 

“This does make some of the things I’ve read make more sense,” Mizar said. “They were really obsessed with work, weren’t they?”

 

“In this area, yeah. Other places put less focus on work ethic and a bit more on other things to control the masses.”

 

“Were there any places that didn’t put a huge effort into ‘controlling the masses’?”

 

“I don’t know, probably. It was a long time ago and I didn’t give a rat’s ass about foreign politics back then.” She shrugged. “But most of the world was a powder keg. If the Calamity hadn’t happened first it really was only going to be so long before someone figured out how to summon the right demon to bring it all down. Then again, people had been saying that for centuries before the Calamity happened, so maybe it really was a stable clusterfuck. Whadda I know?”

 

“How did things get that bad?”

 

She made a noncommittal grunt. “I was never a history person until my life became history. If I had to guess I’d say the answer probably has something to do with colonialism. That’s definitely why white humans were in control, at any rate.” She shook her head. “Anyway, enough about the shitty past, let’s talk about the shitty present. Where you headed to that you think you can do something about the corruption at?”

 

“Apparently the largest collection of books on magic from before the Calamity is still intact,” Mizar said. “I’m starting to get an idea about what I might do, but I need to get a lot more information before I can hope to execute it.”

 

“So you’re going to Gravity Falls,” the First Mother said. “You’re with Alcor, so I’m sure you’ll be fine, but... be careful. You’re not the first person to get the idea that finding that library might be useful. It was a pretty common quest back when people still remembered it existed, actually. But the people who go looking for that place, they had a tendency to disappear. I haven’t heard of anyone making it to that town since the Calamity happened, and we get our fair share of people from everywhere, what with being one of the only suppliers of honey and all.”

 

“I don’t suppose you would know what might be making people disappear?”

 

“They wouldn’t exactly be disappeared if they could come back and say what happened, now would they?” She sighed. “Anyway. I’m old and tired, so unless you have any more questions I think I’m going to be off and and sleep for a couple months. But before I do, Horned One, can we talk?”

 

Fred looked up in surprise. “Well, sure. And it’s Fred, if you will. I haven’t really done anything to earn a formal title or nothin.”

 

“You have horns,” the First Mother said. “Ergo, you are the Horned One.”

 

“Well I suppose that is a pretty literal thing, and I can’t really deny that. But the way you’re saying it makes me think there’s more to it than just that, and I’m not sure I’ve really done anything to earn being the Horned One instead of just being some guy with horns.”

 

“There is more to it than just the horns, but that doesn’t mean it ain’t you,” she said. “Look, I don’t mean to make an argument out of this, let’s just talk.”

 

The First Mother led Fred slowly away from the rest of the group, towards the grove of trees in the center of the town.

 

“How long do you think you will be staying?” The Bright One asked.

 

“I’m itching to get on the road again, if that’s all the same to you guys,” Mizar said. “We’ll stay the night. And in the morning? We’re going to Gravity Falls.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The unkindness is inspired from my towns local megamurder. If you are fortunate enough to live in a city where a megamurder congregates I couldn't recommend visiting them more come winter. There really isn't anything like going to the river on a winter night and there being so many birds in the trees that it looks like the leaves never finished falling.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is highly influenced from the [Curse of Storms modchat](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com/post/110776349963/curse-of-storms) as well as [this submission](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com/post/117076099113/heres-something-perhaps-less-corner-worthy-than) about post disaster societies. As well as me running wild with the idea of a Mizar named Mizar.


End file.
